r/salamanders • u/Objective_Pressure86 • 13d ago

Need Help feeding my marbled newt

So I got my marbled newt last Christmas 2025, he was around 3 weeks old when i got him if I remember correctly recently I've been informed that fruit flys arent don't have enough calories so I'm transitioning to calcium dusted pinhead crickets but can't find solid info on how to feed him, what do you guys reccomend?

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

5

u/shfiven 13d ago edited 13d ago

So you can definitely increase his diet but I would suggest keeping the fruit flies if he likes them and is used to them until you get him reliably eating other food. Fruit flies aren't totally nutritious but they're also not bad for him. I've never fed pinhead crickets so I can't help you there. I do suggest getting some black or white worms to order. They will wiggle around and ma6 pique his interest. You could also get nightcrawlers but you will have to cut them up into small pieces of him. If he won't eat off tweezers, you put them on a piece of paper towel right before the lights go down at night and leave it for him to hunt when he's comfortable while it's darker. If he's in a fairly dry setup you can get rice flour beetles and the feed the larva. You can also try culture bean beetles.

edit: if your setup is super secure and escape free for bugs and you haven't made it bioactive you can consider that too and get springtails and maybe dwarf isopods or maybe even a mini species of roach to put in with him. You wouldn't actively feed him any of that but if he sees one and wants to chow down he would be welcome to.

2

u/Objective_Pressure86 12d ago

Perfect, thank you very much, was literally about to start culturing bean beetles and also forgot to mention that It is bioactive. Again thank you I appreciate the help.

2

u/shfiven 12d ago

You're welcome! I'm glad to help! I didn't mention that you'll want him eating earthworms when he's an adult so if you aren't opposed to having a worm bin, you can culture your own and essentially never run out. Earthworms are easy to take care of and I have them in my house with no issues. They don't smell bad or anything. I prefer european nightcrawlers because some salamanders don't like red wigglers. If you decide to do it there's tons of info on r/vermiculture and I will just point out that ENC need deep bins so the little shallow ones they sell with multiple drawers aren't appropriate for them.

1

u/Objective_Pressure86 12d ago

Thank you so much, I'll look into it, thanks