Gyrinophilus porphyriticus

Hello,

I wanted to show you a picture, taken today I like a lot:



Best Greetings,

Kamil

Beautiful picture of an original species
Thanks Kamil

Great animal!
Can you tell us more about this one? Is it terrestrial?

Hi,

the Springsalamander lives on the egde water/land and gets up to 21-22cm big. In nature the are bad predators for other newts and salamanders like Desmognathus, Eurycea and Plethodon which I can not feed to them in captivitiy of course. I got two groups (each 3 animals). The one shown is my smallest animal and measures about 13cm - my biggest animal is a female in the cellar having the maximum size of about 21cm. This species is very slimy (as most spring species are) and so it's very hard to hold. They feed well on earthworms and other stuff given into the tank. I keep mine in aquariums where they can enter a small land-platform but they normally do that only if i fed them a big fat earth worm. Then they sit up there for 2 days doing nothing just to do the same again :-)
I got at least 2 females, carrying eggs around and so I hope that they could maybe produce som larvae - but until now they didn't do anything in this direction :-(

Best Greetings,

Kamil

wonderful pic!!

Thanks for this pic and the details !

Thanks for those details Kamil!

Here a second picture:



This is the tank in my newt room. It is 60x30x30cm filtered by a JBL Cristalprofi 120. It contains 3 animals (1,1,1). The hidings are made of stones and PVC-pipes under the stones.

Best Greetings,

Kamil

very nice setting, thanks for your pics Kamil

Great pictures and cool set-up!

beutiful newts, and nice aquarium

Just a supposition ,according to the latin name of the species.

Gyrino- could refer to "gyrins",small insects which litterally "walk" on the water surface,if you see what I'm talking about.

-philus means "friend,love".

According to your own observations,could it mean:

-that this salamander is able to swim very close to the water surface
-that it preys on the aforementioned insects?

Thanks for sharing,by the way!

Don't know if it's the real root of the name for this salamander but "gyrins" means also "tadpole" in greek

Hi,

I admit, I have never looked up the meaning of the Name. But the tadpole thing could be right, as they can spend up to 5 years as larvae (so the name would relate to this fact).

Best Greetings,

Kamil

Should be this indeed.
"gyrinos", tadpole in greek and "gyrin" the insect, have also the same root "gyros" that means "to turn, go round in circles"...which seems to be one of the main movement of those 2 animals

We should not be so far from the truth then
Very interesting Kamil,thanks

I was told by Henk Wallays, that a dutch breeder made it to get eggs and larvae - I got females "full" with eggs - keep your fingers crossed that I'll make that too

Best Greetings,

Kamil

Let's hope!