Emperor scorpion behavior...Help with questions and suggesti

What's up guys...I've had many herps such as retics and burms and monitor and tegus and I had emperors before but now that I have them again I made them my main focus of keeping and I wanna get to learn more about keeping scorpions now and I have nothing else any longer so that way all my concentration is on my little guy...so two things I noticed was that he's been making burrows and he leaves his himself half covered and at night he's out trying to climb on the glass and he'll stay up on the glass in a corner for a few minutes aswell...is this normal? Or is it stress? Right now I wanted to have about 3-4 emperors and my little one now is in a 20 gallon long with Eco earth coco fiber bedding since it stays nice and moist and hold humidity well...and I have a water bowl and hide with a heating pad and a 60watt day bulb and dome for the day but I wanna go out to get some drift wood pieces and rocks and sticks and I wanted to know will this be fine or will they get stressed with to much around them? I just wanna know before hand so I don't drive my little one crazy lol...thanks

Emps dont love light, so he hides from it during the day

He comes out at night to explore and hunt ( climbing glass is fine...just trying to see if he can get out somewhere else )

Wood pieces are fine, they love to burrow under them and such.

You don't have to have the day lamp, and more people will tell you not to.

I myself don't have a heat mat so I have bulbs, mainly for the live plants I have in there.


Things to make sure:

Substrate is deep enough to make sufficient hides
Substrate is moist
Temperature is good ( preferably a warm side of tank and a cooler side )
Hide places provided
Water bowl regularly filled
Not bothering the guy =)

make sure you sterlize the wood and rinse the rocks really well...

but other than that Mr.Win pretty much has it covered

Yeh, make sure you bake any wood if you're taking it from outside to eliminate the risk of parasites/mites and other annoyances.

Otherwise, just buy some of the stuff at pet shops and you won't need to bake it.

Microwave IS THE answer!!! You can just microwave anything you get. Also make sure to put the heat pad on the side of the tank or you are to find yourself consistently having to pour water down the side of the tank to get that spot wet cause the pad will dry out all the flooring there. I have both a heat lamp and a pad but i mean either one is ok. I have the lamp cause it adds extra heat but most people say its not necessary. I have my room at colder temperatures tho.

Heat mats at the bottom are bad not because of evaporating too much moisture, but because scorps burrow to escape heat -- which doesn't help much if it only brings them closer to the heat source.

So should I remove my heat pad from the bottom and put it on the side of the tank?

yes

ok thanks guys for the info

Always a pleasure. Lol ( i didnt really help but ill always take credit)

anemiaffx wrote:

Microwave IS THE answer!!! You can just microwave anything you get. Also make sure to put the heat pad on the side of the tank or you are to find yourself consistently having to pour water down the side of the tank to get that spot wet cause the pad will dry out all the flooring there. I have both a heat lamp and a pad but i mean either one is ok. I have the lamp cause it adds extra heat but most people say its not necessary. I have my room at colder temperatures tho.

I have seen fire ants live thru a few runs thru a microwave in my younger more destructive years.

lol thats funny. ive actually never had to microwave or put something in the oven, i would always do microwave. Its quicker and almost just efficient.

I was just concerned that since it didnt kill ants, what else can live thru "being microwaved"

idk microwaves active the water molecules in food and make them boil thus making things explode so i dont understand why fire ants would live...

It doesn't make them boil and explode . . . but you're correct that it's the water molecules that absorb the energy, resulting in heat, which kills microorganisms by denaturing proteins essential to growth.

However, now that I think about it, I don't believe I can advocate microwaving as being as effective as an oven. Why, you may ask? Because some bacteria can produce bacterial spores which can survive extremely dry conditions --> no water = nothing to absorb the microwaves = no damaging heat. An oven bypasses the water "middle-man."

I imagine that some insects can survive because of inefficient microwaves with hot and cool regions that have varying amount of microwave radiation reaching the target.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/24/i-nuked-a-roach-he-didnt-die