Worst week of all time

[fusion121]

I'm only suggesting why it may have gone pear shaped; the temperature is the only thing that seems like it could perhaps be causing your problem, assuming your controlling humidity well. Gravid females of lots of species do like heat they seek it out as likely it increases they development rate of the young, there’s an argument to made though that high temperatures can mess up the development of embryos resulting in the birth of undeveloped young such as you’ve had.

 

[canadianscorp]

oliver,
Hmm, i wasnt aware of that. from all of my studies and tribulations, i have had nothing but success with higher temps for gravid scorps (although not much higher than normal 85-90). What would you reccomend as a good climatic table to go by for androctonus, or even all xeric spp? all the more info would help, to see which aproach works the best.

cheers, steve

P.S. where did you get the info on high temps causing under-developement of offspring?

 

[fusion121]

It’s merely a conjecture, obviously it’s impossible to say for sure why the birth went bad, and occasionally these things happen with scorpions

Experiment, remate her and keep her at a slightly lower temperature and see if that helps. That’s what’s great about this hobby…eventually it ends up working if you fiddle with conditions enough Personally I've lowered my temperatures to about 26-28C and gavid females seem to do fine with that.

 

[Scorpfanatic]

IMO i think that scorpion will definately wait for the perfct of notbetter times and temps to give birth to their babies and ive known of scorp due to the surropunding temps, humidilty etc etc may hold on to the birth longer .... so i believe some resonable amount of luck as to play a part , so does the health of the female scorp?

 

[Androctonus_bic]

Sorry for this moltitudinary loss, that's a big pitty. But wake up your feelings and just try it again.
And the mother? it is well? Does eat right?

Cheers
Carles

 

[woodson]

do not give up the babies...
drip some water beside the scorplings maybe there are some will be alive and moult to 2nd instar.
The same thing happen several days before and 3 of mine are alive at last.

Hope all will be better!

 

[Prymal]

Steve,

Yes. I've had some success with scorps giving birth at higher temps but i've also had great success in them doing so at normal room temps including A. australis, A. mauritanicus and A. bicolor.
There's still much we don't know regarding how scorpions relate to various thermal stimuli. Abushama in various experiments showed that L. quinquestriatus prefers RH in the range of 60-67% - not under 40%!
Remember, NO organism is perfectly adapted to its environment. Even if a scorpion lives in a region that experiences seasonally or constant harsh climatic/environmental conditions does not mean that those are the temps they prefer. They burrow to ESCAPE such high temps and I imagine temps within their burrows are not only more stable but cooler than surface temps as well.
Regarding my Androctonus spp. If night time temps are exceptionally warm - 80F+ - they are not as surface active as when the temps are between 74-78F. Over the years with Androctonus species, the "magic" temps seems to be between 75-78F - not 90-100F!
My attic experiment is just that - an experiment. This is not a permanent situation and while early-instar specimens do molt more frequently and i've had a few fems give birth, the extreme temps and RH have also produced some atypical behaviors in my scorps. Yesterday and today, I went to the attic to find both of my gravid fems H. spadix SOAKING in their filled water bowls! Most of my mauri's have excavated deep burrows (12cm+). My mauri's have never burrowed in their lives! I've already brought all my Diplocentrus and Euscorpius species back downstairs. Sadly, a large beautiful gravid E. italicus gave birth to an undeveloped mass that resulted in her death!
Also, it is NOT a necessity that early-instar specimens molt at increased rates. It's good to try to get them through the typically problematic stadia 2-3 but there is nothing to indicate that such rapid rates of growth do not adversely affect the scorpions. There's also no guarantee that any "scorpling" will experience a problem during the early stadia of development.
Remember, when the offspring are birthed, such high temps will act in a dehydrative manner and may actually retard the ability of a young scorp to survive long enough to ascend to the dorsum of the female?
As soon as I complete my shelving units and set-ups, all are coming back to the former dinning room where 11" heat tape on the rear walls of the shelves will keeps temps in the range of 80-85F during the day and down to 73F at night. Until then, as soon as I return home from work tomorrow, they will be stacked in the dinning room where temps and RH is not extreme.
Personally, I do NOT believe any scorp needs temps above 85F to thrive.

 

[canadianscorp]

Luc,
Thats pretty much what my thoughts have been always on the subject of premature birth. It is merely a coincodence. Even if you keep the conditions perfrct, this still could happen.

cheers, steve

 

[quiz]

Personally, I do NOT believe any scorp needs temps above 85F to thrive.

I never keep any of my adults in temps over 85F. I'm more comfortable keeping them at 80F during the day and 70F at night. But with early instar scorplings, i'm more comfortable when I have them at high temp. Since I put my lil guys in a hotbox, I never had a molting problem. But before my hotbox was set right, I had some deaths because I used a high watts red bulb. You'd be surprised how fast the temps would rise soon as that light comes on. The whole tanks temperature would be around 85-90F but under that red bulb, the temperature is hotter. When the lights are on, the temps would go from 85F to 110F within 15-20 seconds under that bulb. Oh well! you live and learn, now I only use 2 low watts red bulb for my hotbox, 1 on each end to balance the heat and the time that they'd go off and on.

 

[Bob bobo]

Had a bad brood... looking to find out what went wrong. My guess is it was too hot as it's a cuban species in arizona...

 

[Dr SkyTower]

yeah going by the responses from those earlier posts I think temperature (and most probably the resulting stress) may have caused the mother to abort her young. Welcome aboard, by the way!

 

[GordoOldman]

That sucks. Never fun when such an anticlimax occurs to expected birth...
Oddly I had an australis do the same thing two days ago. Temperatures were definitely not an issue, but I did have some very serious T-storms and major brometric pressure changes that day.

Most times when I have premature births they are accompanied with masses of unfertilized ova...not in this particular case though. To salvage the dissapointment, I fed the australis premies to some 3i L. haengii....


Sorry for your loss.