My first scoprion........ P. imperator

[Wisdom16]

I bought it today at my LPS. They kept it in a non-heated critter keeper with sand as the substrate. They also kept it in there with those cricket quencher gels When I brought it home it went straight for the water dish and sat there and lapped up water for 1-2 minutes before going to the heated side of the tank. The LPS also left uneaten crickets in there with the scorpion and the crix chewed about 1/8-1/4 of the scorpion's exoskeleton off on it's tail. Hopefully it isn't any permanent damage. I also think I saw a mite on the scorpion too. How do I get rid of mites?

 

[Fluid Filter]

Congradulations on you new scorp! Pretty brutal LPS you got there. Mine is almost as bad. They keep them in a display case under bright light with no hide or water. As for the mite(s) u should use the search function since id be willing to bet the subject has been covered before but basically i think a few mites are ok but keep the cage clean of dead crickets to keep them from multiplying. If they get bad then dry the tank out and most will die.

 

[Arlius]

Is the scorp an adult? If its an adult the tail damage could end up being detrimental... Hope everything works out for you, follow Fluids advice... make sure you keep the humidity up. (Once you take care of mites anyways)

 

[Wisdom16]

The humidity is about 75% and the scorpion is 5-6" long. I'm not sure if it is a male of female yet, but it's pretty fat-looking. Right now it is munching on a king mealie.

 

[OneSickPuppy]

Most places that sell scorpions locally seem to have no idea how to keep them.

 

[MattM]

OneSickPuppy>

Same over here in Holland, nobody knows a thing about keeping scorpions. If you hand out a A. Australis to a pet shop and say "Hey, you want to buy this Pandinus Imperator?", they'll sell it the next day as an Imperator.......

And the advice on how to keep them is the same in every shop. "Get a plastic box, but some sand in it, feed 'em a few times a week and thats all you need!".

:wall:

 

[Wisdom16]

Putting it on sand is the worst you could do to a P. imperator

 

[Black Hawk]

Putting it on sand is the worst you could do to a P. imperator

not true, i'm sure a bed of arsenic would be worse

 

[OneSickPuppy]

luckily some stores sell the wrong things to the buyers advantage ... but only one store that I know of really does this with super great prices.

 

[ThatGuy]

ya thats what sucks when you get pet stores that dont know what there doing, and i wonder why they even sell them if they dont even know how to care for them properly ? :wall:

 

[OneSickPuppy]

To make money in a day and age when petstores arent as popular as in the 80s. Remember as a kid when there was a million tropical fish stores on every corner? The pet store is dead. Those that are left have to cater to the freaks among us to make a profit.

 

[weyman93]

The humidity is about 75% and the scorpion is 5-6" long. I'm not sure if it is a male of female yet, but it's pretty fat-looking. Right now it is munching on a king mealie.

You can tell if they are males or females by looking at their combs under their stomachs. The bigger the combs it is a male the smaller the combs it is a female

I too had pandinus emperator(emperor) actually 4. I found out that one was a boy and the others were girls.

 

[G. Carnell]

maybe you had 3 males and & Female; i dont know what your description means; but MALES have the longer, "thicker" pectines

 

[Wisdom16]

Mine seems to have smaller pectines. They look like they're and inch at the most. Maybe just 3/4 of an inch.

 

[ScorpDemon]

the width isnt all that important.. its the length of the "teeth" on the pectines (comb looking things) and with nothing to compare them to.. and being new to scorps.. gonna be hard to tell

 

[G. Carnell]

think!
if the teeth are longer, than the pectines are wider

:wall: :wall: :wall:

 

[murinuz]

help..

I have P. imperator too and there are these mates on it... Please help me, how could i beat them... Are they simbionts or parasits...thx

 

[Rabid Flea]

what i did to get rid of my mites were to let the cage totally dry out, this will kill the moisture dependant mites, but then again you could buy the good mites to kill the bad mites, do a search and you will find the solution.

 

[parabuthus]

I boiled my substrate one time, and that killed a HEAVY infestation. That was when I first got a scorp (emp). The guy who sold it to me had NO CLUE. He had the emps on a sand substrate and had small juveniles in with a hugely aggressive -and large- adult, with only one hide. They were stuck under an intense heat lamp and he handled them with big ass tweezers WITHOUT neoprene/sponge/rubber tips... suffice to say they went crazy when tailed by these things.

To top it off he gave me mite infested substrate. I was a novice at the time and had no clue what to look for.

Now when I clean my tanks out I nuke (damp) substrate in the microwave, just to be safe, so I can get more safe use out of it. Eventually it loses it's moisture retention and I get new stuff -the expanding coconut brick! .