I just biked over to my parents house today. I checked on their half drained mini pond, decided I'd check if any frogs or toads laid eggs here. Put my hand in the water and saw what I thought was a tadpole. Cupped the little critter in my hand with water and noticed branch like gills. Do a google search and this critter does look like a baby salamander.
I would like to move them all into my tank if possible or relocate them. You see another time the pond was filled with tadpoles, my fathered cleaned the pond draining it with buckets and dumped all of the tadpoles on the ground to die...See, I was watching the tadpoles grow each time I came over, I come another day and say where are all of the tadpoles?. Goodness was I upset!...If I had known he was going to do that I would have been over there with a net and a bucket to save and move them.
So if I can't keep them in my tank and raise them( I know there are ethical issues about taking wild amphibians),they'd be better off somewhere else just in case my father decides to clean the pond out again and dump every aquatic critter in there on the ground to die. So either way, it would be nice to get the best way to relocate them into another body of water or into one of my tanks.
I suspect they are the brown and red speckled salamanders that are the most common in our area, they may be something else for all I know, I've never seen them before.