Reports tend to suggest that female newts can produce 200-300 eggs in a breeding season, but my experience is that they can lay twice as many as this if conditions are favourable. Feeding a rich diet helps, particularly using livefoods, though they happily feed on frozen and pelleted foods if small enough. Eggs are laid among the leaves of aquatic plants. The female newt clasps a leaf with her hind feet, laying a single egg at a time, then folds the leaf over to hide the egg (in nature this disguises them from other newts or predators). These are quite easily spotted in the tank once egg-laying begins, you can wait for a plant/stem to become covered in eggs then remove it to a rearing tank (storage bins are ideal for this purpose) for eggs to hatch into. Eggs take about 3 weeks to develop into larvae, though this can be shorter or faster depending on the temperature. The embryo is covered by a few millimetres of clear jelly (like frogspawn, but individually), so you can actually watch the embryo develop into a larva. When fully formed, the egg bursts and the larva is released into the water. It is essential that eggs are kept in clean water, as foul water can cause the eggs to mould over and die. Rainwater is pristine, easily collected by placing a container of some sort outside during rainy weather or, alternatively, fill a container with tap water and allow 48 hours for chemicals to evaporate before you use it. Tank water from the parents’ enclosure is also fine as long as it is clean too.

Hatchling larvae are tiny, usually a few millimetres in length, and feed only in response to moving live food – feeding behaviour is triggered by movement at this point in their development, as they do not yet have a sense of smell. Therefore, the larvae require tiny live food items. Some people like to use baby Brine Shrimp, however these are saltwater invertebrates and will die within a day or so if not eaten, fouling the water. My personal preference is to add Daphnia to the rearing tank in advance, allowing them to establish and breed, so that there are tiny newborn daphnia for the hatchling newt larvae to feed on. Daphnia are very nutritious, but also rich in carotenes, which create the vivid orange belly colours in the adult newts. As the larvae become larger, they will consume the bigger daphnia, growing quickly at room temperature. Once they reach 1.5cm or so, you can supplement their diet with slightly larger foods, such as grindal worms (like whiteworms but smaller), relative to their size. Once the larvae have developed front legs and their back legs are budding, they begin to develop a sense of smell. At this point, you can start to offer them dead/processed foods, like frozen bloodworms and cichlid pellets.

 By the time the larvae are approaching metamorphosis, they will typically be around 3-5cm in length. You may notice that their colouring from the brown-grey larva to blue mottling of the juvenile newt. Typically, they start to lose their gills at this point, but Alpine Newts are very capable of neoteny – retaining juvenile features, in this case gills, into adulthood – so it is possible that not all of them will complete metamorphosis. The bright bellies also become apparent at this stage. To avoid morphs drowning, I bring the water level down to around 10cm when the larvae begin to metamorphose, keeping it full of dense aquatic vegetation. It is easier to feed aquatic juveniles, so I prefer to keep my morphs in an aquatic setup, therefore I do not offer an island for them. This means they cannot fully leave the water and dry out, but they can sit on top of the vegetation to rest and breathe air. Keep the water full of live foods to encourage the newts to stay aquatic. Once they begin feeding again (which could take a week or two after morphing) you can gradually increase the water level. Kept in this way with plentiful food, they will reach adulthood by around 9-12 months old (terrestrially 2-3 years would be more typical) and are often capable of breeding by the following spring. Certainly, you should be able to distinguish their sexes at this size. By this size, they are ready to cohabit with their parents and can be added to the main tank.

A less laborious method for rearing larvae involves leaving the eggs in situ, in the adult tank. You will lose some to adult predation, which naturally occurs in the wild, but several are likely to survive and will feed off the rich invertebrate life already established in the tank. Among the aquatic vegetation are a lot of tiny organisms which we don’t generally notice, but which provide an excellent food source for young larvae. Lots of aquatic plants will ensure plenty hiding spaces for hatchlings. Despite their voracious (yet clumsy!) feeding behaviour, adult newts show little interest in larvae, though they will eat one if the opportunity is in front of them. Generally, well-fed newts do not predate upon their own offspring in captivity.