Babycurus jacksoni growth rate?
- Thread starter ThomasH
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So much of invert growth depends on environmental factors. How warm it is, how much food ect. I don't think you can get a clear answer. I do think 5 months might be a tad long. Then again I have limited experience with young scorpions.
John
John
It is about 75 degrees year round in this room, a tad higher in the summer. It gets food whenever I think it is hungry, about once a week. Humidity is around 70. I am almost positive that it is in molt right now. It is getting fatter and fatter!
TBH
TBH
before the moult, it will become very inactive for a day or so. it may not even respond to external stimuli, or if it does it will do so very slowly and sluggishly. when I first came across it, I though my scorps were about to kick the bucket.. but the next day.. yays. 
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I have a 2nd instar also of this same kind and wondered the same thing. They are playing dead half the time so what's 'inactive' for a day or so??...
I have issues finding the little guys!
So far I'm raising 60 or 70 B. Jacksoni from birth with great success. I set up the cage with peat moss on one side and sand on the other side. The peat is only moist enough to clump when pinched, but not wet. Similar in consistency to snake egg incubating material. The sand I leave dry. I place a flat stone or similar hide spanning both peat and sand held up just high enough for the scorps to get under. This setup gives them a humidity gradient and they choose what's right. I keep them in the high 70's, low 80's with no supplemental heat. I feed them adult crickets, believe it or not, but never alive. I crush the cricket's head until movement stops and just place it in the cage. They always find the crickets. This species will eat a cricket as big as the scorpion itself! I do this at least once a week. I feel from experience that scorpions can handle a lot more food than we realize. My experience has been the more they eat, the stronger they molt.
With all this said, my babies are at 4i within a few months time, well on their way to maturity within 1 year, which is normal for this species.
I hope this helps, ThomasH. Follow this care and your little guys should be growing like weeds in no time!
-Dave
With all this said, my babies are at 4i within a few months time, well on their way to maturity within 1 year, which is normal for this species.
I hope this helps, ThomasH. Follow this care and your little guys should be growing like weeds in no time!
-Dave
Hi Thomas,
5 months between instar 2-3 is rather long. Does it eat well? Are the captive conditions okay? If these are okay and it eats at least one prey item a week, then it is either just a slow grower or it isn't in a very good shape and it will probably die before adulthood.
5 months between instar 2-3 is rather long. Does it eat well? Are the captive conditions okay? If these are okay and it eats at least one prey item a week, then it is either just a slow grower or it isn't in a very good shape and it will probably die before adulthood.
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So far I'm raising 60 or 70 B. Jacksoni from birth with great success. I set up the cage with peat moss on one side and sand on the other side. The peat is only moist enough to clump when pinched, but not wet. Similar in consistency to snake egg incubating material. The sand I leave dry. I place a flat stone or similar hide spanning both peat and sand held up just high enough for the scorps to get under. This setup gives them a humidity gradient and they choose what's right. I keep them in the high 70's, low 80's with no supplemental heat. I feed them adult crickets, believe it or not, but never alive. I crush the cricket's head until movement stops and just place it in the cage. They always find the crickets. This species will eat a cricket as big as the scorpion itself! I do this at least once a week. I feel from experience that scorpions can handle a lot more food than we realize. My experience has been the more they eat, the stronger they molt.
With all this said, my babies are at 4i within a few months time, well on their way to maturity within 1 year, which is normal for this species.
I hope this helps, ThomasH. Follow this care and your little guys should be growing like weeds in no time!
-Dave
I'm not the OP but am benefitting from this thread-
B. Jacksoni scorplings will eat pre-killed food?
I'm definitely going to try that.
Mine have eaten twice and I've had them for a few weeks already.
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yea agreed
my B.jacksonis were adult within a year, moulting every 1-2 months, really fast at early instars
maybe if you leave him (monitored) next to a radiator or something, it could induce him to moult
Do you really feel feeding pre-killed is necessary? I've read in a number of places that you should do that, or freeze them or maim them in some way so that they're helpless, but in practice it just seems unnecessary to me (unless you have a severely handicapped scorpion). does anyone have any real stories of a cricket seriously injuring a scorpion? I can understand for young ones (maybe that's what your referring to and I misunderstood?) but then it seems like you should just feed them something smaller like pinheads.
For me watching them hunt is part of the fun of owning a scorp, and dead feeding seems like an unnecessary precaution. I understand that there's nothing wrong with feeding pre-killed, and I'm not criticizing you in anyway, just wondering why.
I got the care down, although I take a slightly different approach to substrate but nothing radical. I am raising a few too. I have a big female that later had about 20 babies one day after I went to bed. They have doubled in size under a week since I've owned them. The other jacksoni sling I bought has molted twice in 3 months. I think I may just have a defective sling. Bummer. I apologize, I should have specified this in my first post.So far I'm raising 60 or 70 B. Jacksoni from birth with great success. I set up the cage with peat moss on one side and sand on the other side. The peat is only moist enough to clump when pinched, but not wet. Similar in consistency to snake egg incubating material. The sand I leave dry. I place a flat stone or similar hide spanning both peat and sand held up just high enough for the scorps to get under. This setup gives them a humidity gradient and they choose what's right. I keep them in the high 70's, low 80's with no supplemental heat. I feed them adult crickets, believe it or not, but never alive. I crush the cricket's head until movement stops and just place it in the cage. They always find the crickets. This species will eat a cricket as big as the scorpion itself! I do this at least once a week. I feel from experience that scorpions can handle a lot more food than we realize. My experience has been the more they eat, the stronger they molt.
With all this said, my babies are at 4i within a few months time, well on their way to maturity within 1 year, which is normal for this species.
I hope this helps, ThomasH. Follow this care and your little guys should be growing like weeds in no time!
-Dave
Thank you though,
TBH
1. No, it eats about once a month but I give offerings regularly. A contrast to my other voracious jacksonis, I have a mom with a good sized clutch and a cb sling I bought that eats well and has molted twice.
2. I have raised over 50 tarantulas, a centipede, and a few scorpions. All of my animals do very well.
Well I obviously hope this fellow makes it to adulthood, but based on my observations I must say that death is very possible in this circumstance.
TBH
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He/She did mean for scorplings.. that's the way I undewrstood it. That's what this thread is about- scorplings.
I do this for the young ones because the crickets I feed are as big or bigger than the scorps. I don't know if the crickets could do damage, but they could surely stress the little scorpions out. I feed this way for a few reasons: ease of maintenance, total lack of stress to the scorplings, and they have the opportunity to eat as much as they want. Anything left over I remove the next day, but it's usually not much. I keep many species of scorpions so I still get to have fun watching the others catch live food! There's nothing like watching the speed and acuracy of an Androctonus mauretanicus, or finding a newly acquired adult Hadogenes troglodytes eating in your care for the first time! Or even watching a Lasiodora parahybana stuff 3 and 4 adult crickets in her chelicerae at once! I could go on and on
I will see one or two on occasion in the sling that grow much slower than the others, but never an entire sling. I've seen this happen in a group setting, so other factors could have been involved like competition.
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As has been said, if you are around the one month mark increase the humidity and heat a little, might make them jump out. It has worked for me. Mine are molting once a month. One 3i a few 5i and couple 6i. I have too many males though....