Is there a shortage of tailless whip scorpions?

Xenohunt

Arachnopeon
Joined
May 18, 2016
Messages
33
Probably like 4 months ago it seemed like a boom of them started. My local stores even had them. But now I cannot find a single supplier of damon diadema. If i do they are babies and gone fast.

Does anyone know of a place that sells adults that will ship (us)? Does anyone have any knowledge of the lack of tailless whips? I spoke to ken the bug guy several times and he said he cannot find a supplier that has any. If they do, they never end up making a deal.
 

shining

Arachnodemon
Old Timer
Joined
Jul 15, 2011
Messages
755
Probably like 4 months ago it seemed like a boom of them started. My local stores even had them. But now I cannot find a single supplier of damon diadema. If i do they are babies and gone fast.

Does anyone know of a place that sells adults that will ship (us)? Does anyone have any knowledge of the lack of tailless whips? I spoke to ken the bug guy several times and he said he cannot find a supplier that has any. If they do, they never end up making a deal.
Swift's Inverts has some cb babies.
 

chanda

Arachnoking
Old Timer
Joined
Jun 27, 2010
Messages
2,229
It really seems to come and go. It took me over a year to find some - and then I picked up eight subadults on Craigs list for $40. I've bred them a couple of times but had so many babies I didn't know what to do with all of them. Ended up giving a bunch of them to a dealer that I know - and then started seeing them online and at shows all over the place. (Some of them were even mine!) Last year they were at all the shows, but now that you mention it, I just went to the Reptile Super Show in Pomona yesterday and I don't recall seeing a single one there. Guess it's time to try breeding mine again!
 

Xenohunt

Arachnopeon
Joined
May 18, 2016
Messages
33
It really seems to come and go. It took me over a year to find some - and then I picked up eight subadults on Craigs list for $40. I've bred them a couple of times but had so many babies I didn't know what to do with all of them. Ended up giving a bunch of them to a dealer that I know - and then started seeing them online and at shows all over the place. (Some of them were even mine!) Last year they were at all the shows, but now that you mention it, I just went to the Reptile Super Show in Pomona yesterday and I don't recall seeing a single one there. Guess it's time to try breeding mine again!
Seems like you notice the same trends I do.

In michigan, there is a different reptile show every weekend. They all say "this is not really a bug show" when I ask the sellers if they ever bring whips.

I have an adult male and a sub adult (I think) female. I am waiting to be able to breed them so I can at least share them around to local shops in detroit.
 

InvertsandOi

Arachnoknight
Joined
Feb 12, 2016
Messages
233
Yeah I bought my 3rd or 4rth instar D. diadema back in march and now that it's a 6th or 7th instar male (turns out) I'd like to find a female to pair him up with. I haven't been frantically searching or anything, but I have been keeping an eye out. Nothing. I could have my pick of dealers back in march. Bugsincyberspace even had H. batessi in stock back then. Now the only amblypygids he even has listed are the florida whipspiders. So yeah, I've noticed it too. Also in Michigan btw.
 

Xenohunt

Arachnopeon
Joined
May 18, 2016
Messages
33
I guess i got lucky by getting a pair! I just have to wait for maturity in the female.
 

BobBarley

Arachnoprince
Joined
Sep 16, 2015
Messages
1,486
You can almost always find some available in the classifieds section here in AB. That's where I got mine.
 

Xenohunt

Arachnopeon
Joined
May 18, 2016
Messages
33
I have never seen any that are not fresh out of the mommy on here.
 

jaredc

Arachnosquire
Joined
Nov 5, 2014
Messages
84
I think the gestation time has something to do with the ebb and flow of their availability. I have a gravid female but it'll be another few months before they descend.
 

Xenohunt

Arachnopeon
Joined
May 18, 2016
Messages
33
You find any, mate? Swift has some diadema; two inchers.
I might of found that actually. It was one single baby.

I am honestly just curious why they came and went. I have a pair that I am going to breed because i want others to have them!
 

Ranitomeya

Arachnoknight
Old Timer
Joined
Oct 11, 2012
Messages
255
I suspect there aren't any available right now at a larger size because they eventually need to be separated from one another unless you have an extremely big enclosure to keep them in. If separated, each one would require a relatively large container and that might be take a bit too much room for some. In my experience, the babies are perfectly fine being housed together, but territorial aggression and siblicide starts occurring as they approach maturity.

I highly doubt that the lack of availability is because they're not breeding. Damon diadema aren't hard to breed and my female has produced four clutches of eggs since last autumn without molting. I keep all of mine in a communal setup and have noticed that in my setup, the juveniles are not very communal once they approach breeding size and the adult females start killing other females if they produce eggs. I had started with one male and three females and the largest female killed the other two when she produced her first clutch of eggs. The male was never subject to her aggression.

I kept her second clutch with her and the male until their body size began approaching that of the mature male and that's when I started noticing that the number of individuals started dropping in the tank. I had about 30 babies in the terrarium at last count and the number had dropped to twelve before I finally separated them from each other and placed them in their own containers. They were kept well-fed and almost always had prey items available, but I'd started see individuals dead on the bottom of the terrarium. They'd be mostly whole with damage that didn't suggest cannibalism. I ended up with 3 juvenile males and 9 juvenile females from that clutch and I know that I had about the same number of males as females before the numbers started dropping, so seems as though male on male aggression was either more common or more likely to end in a death.

I did have some available a month ago, but unfortunately I currently have no juveniles available and the latest batch of offspring are only a couple weeks old and I prefer to raise them until they're much larger so they're less sensitive to shipping.
 

Xenohunt

Arachnopeon
Joined
May 18, 2016
Messages
33
Straight from the practice! Thanks for the information.
I only first started paying attention to their availability. Is a shortage a common thing throughout the years?
 

Ranitomeya

Arachnoknight
Old Timer
Joined
Oct 11, 2012
Messages
255
You tend to only see larger individuals available in larger numbers when they're imported. Otherwise, the only larger individuals you'll see are those that someone's taken the time and space to rear. You could expect to see tiny baby diadema at least once every few months if someone's breeding and selling them, but their clutches vary in size and from what I've seen, the number of eggs drops with each subsequent clutch if the female hasn't molted. This could account for the decreasing availability over the course of each year. As for year to year availability for the larger, imported individuals, it ends up being an issue of whether or not they're being imported, whether or not they're being collected for export, or whether or not the areas they're being collected in are open to export.

They mature smaller than you'd think, so many of the large individuals that come from imports are probably a few years past their first mature molt. Just ten months after molting off their mother, mine were nearly the size of the sexually mature male when I'd first obtained him.

This was taken in February, so the babies are six months old in the image. They'd already tripled their size since hatching. The large female hasn't grown significantly since I first got her despite having already molted twice in my care. She was wild-caught and imported. The male is smaller than her and did grow significantly when he molted for me the first time. He was already mature when I got him and was captive-born. His pedipalps were not nearly as noticeably long before he molted.
 
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