Gee!! 12inches... my turtle is only 9 inches! [although females of the species I have tend to grow to 12 inches too, so ]

That's pretty large. I've had one newt before, but it wasn't very big, probably 4-5inches max. It only lived 3 years . I'm assuming this species is long lived? To be so large, shouldn't they be?

I wish we still sold Newts. We stopped selling them, because kids got tired of them and tried to release them here.

I wish you luck on the breeding part! It'd be interesting to see what the offspring will look like [most likely majoritively leucistic as well]