Baby Newts

poppie · #1 (**permalink**) 30-07-2011, 05:00 PM

Hi
We have lots of weed really starting to clog up one of our ponds. It's a fairly large pond and when I raked out a couple of clumps of weed I noticed movement and found about 10 1" long newts in one and 6 or 7 in the other I shook them free and back into the pond, but this is only a tiny percentage of the weed, so other than going through every clump does anyone know if they will move out into the main part of the pond at a certain age/size, or is this where they naturally like to live?

GCN lova · #2 (**permalink**) 30-07-2011, 05:37 PM

in autumn the adults should leave the pond but newt larvae may stay behind and overwinter in the pond.

Gill Catton · #3 (**permalink**) 30-07-2011, 06:19 PM

Yes if you can bear to leave the weed in place for a while longer it will help the little newts hugely as it gives them a place to hide and hunt for small invertebrates. If you can wait until early winter that might be best, the newts will be more mature and able to support themselves any may even have left the pond (and the weed may well start to die back then of its own accord too).

Plus if we have a hot August/ September the weed will help keep the water oxygenated and will help keep algae down too.

Hope this helps

poppie · #4 (**permalink**) 30-07-2011, 06:20 PM

Thanks for your reply.
I'll just take a bit out at a time and go through it - if the first two are anything to go by, we should be inundated with newts

Kayleigh · #5 (**permalink**) 30-07-2011, 06:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by poppie

Thanks for your reply.
I'll just take a bit out at a time and go through it - if the first two are anything to go by, we should be inundated with newts

Only a very few will make it to adulthood something like 5 per 200 eggs will make it so you will not be inundated..

poppie · #6 (**permalink**) 31-07-2011, 05:55 AM

I'll just leave the weed, as it must be protecting them to some extent for there to be so many.
It's just a wildlife pond (no goldfish etc) so the weed doesn't look great, but it's not doing any harm

Gill Catton · #7 (**permalink**) 01-08-2011, 05:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by poppie

I'll just leave the weed, as it must be protecting them to some extent for there to be so many.
It's just a wildlife pond (no goldfish etc) so the weed doesn't look great, but it's not doing any harm

Quite the opposite, you'd be amazed at how much use it can be. I took a twenty cm piece of hornwort from a weed clogged pond once, it was a reddish colour and I was thinking about putting it in my fish tank because it was quite pretty. I put it in a jar of tap water for a week or so to kill any dodgy microbes that might be on it and I think something like two black fly larvae, two or three back swimmer larvae and at least one tiny damselfly larva emerged from this one short section. The amount of weed that was in that pond I cannot even begin to imagine how much life it was hiding/ sustaining!!!