Salamander: Food and Feeding
If you are considering a salamander as a pet, one of the first questions you would like answered is: “What is salamander food?” Right after that you are likely to wonder about how a salamander is fed. Here is an answer to those questions.
In the wild, salamanders are carnivores and they eat invertebrates. The exact diet of salamanders depends on the region where they live. If they are aquatic they are likely to consume small fish and if they are terrestrial they will eat insects. So, before figuring out what to feed your pet salamander you will have to find out what kind it is.
The age of the salamander will also affect what you need to use as feed. In the early stages, salamander food has to be small in keeping with its own size. Daphnids and cyclospen are considered acceptable at this stage. As the salamander grows, you can feed it something larger like a red mosquito larva. Past the sixth week stage they move on to the adult diet although you may slowly have to increase the actual portion of salamander food that you use. A water salamander in the adult phase may eat rain worms and maggots while the land salamander food will include fruit flies and spiders.
Among the specific suggestions for salamander food are crickets, worms, flies, cockroaches and slugs. Terrestrial salamanders love beetles and pill bugs. You can collect these from your own backyard or garden as long as you can be sure that they have not been affected by pesticides or other chemicals in the environment as this can well impact the salamander. A good way to make sure they have not ingested pesticides is to keep them in a bottle for a couple of days after collecting them. If they continue to live it is a good indication they have escaped any sprays. Mealworms, bloodworms, white worms and king worms are also acceptable in salamander diet although it is a good idea to keep the mealworms to a minimum as their shells may be difficult for the salamander to digest.
Pet stores are likely to stock appropriate salamander food. You do have to know that you cannot use freeze-dried fish or insects as salamander food. Experts say that salamanders need the feel of the hunt to have their hunger instinct stimulated. So you should use live prey and the process of tracking and moving behind them has to be part of the ritual of feeding salamanders. In the case of the water salamander, you can introduce small shrimp and fish in the water as part of the environment and that way you do not have to set up a daily feeding schedule. You may have to replenish the tank at regular intervals as you monitor the food consumption of your pet salamander.
This brings up the question of how often you have to feed salamanders. Salamanders typically eat three or four times a week. Early on as the salamander is growing it needs more frequent feeding. Also, if your salamander has had a loss of limb and is regenerating then it will need more frequent feeding during the growth phase.
Much like our own diet, salamander food should also have variety to ensure nutritional balance and interesting tastes. Sticking to only one kind of worm or fish can get boring for the salamanders just as none of us would like to eat the same item even if it is our favorite food. By circulating among a range of different items you can keep your salamander’s taste buds stimulated. This is also a good way of making sure different nutritional needs of the salamander are covered. Salamander food can be enhanced in nutritional value if you coat it with some dry fish flakes.