Massive Heterometrus spinifer Colony

This was a setup I made in my old place for 24 captive-bred adult H. spinifer (F1)



Yes, I repeat... thats 24 adult individuals in a 2x1x1.5ft tank (pushing it admitedly



Nonetheless, no cannibalism occurred despite the brief squabbles over food. Most of them are under the logs, they take team shifts on surface food-drops LOL

wow, 24 of them

Enjoyable pics too

that looks really nice.
just curious, how do you clean up the tank usually?

wow! nice!! i have 2 adult H.Spinifers and 13 little ones just born on the first of july and doing well. i want to know how big your tank is though thinking of doing something like that except that i want to put my 2 adults in an exoterra tank. either the 12x12x12 or 18x18x24. any suggestions?

Ok... Honestly I only clean the tank approximately 4 times a year or everytime I do a complete overhaul. It might seem congested but I just shower the tank with superworms and the just take surface patrol shifts to give each other space....

which is as pretty sweet as spinnys get.

I also sit by the tank and throw food at individuals that havent't eaten... so i guess to some extent it keeps them complacent enough to live peacefully... the half-buried log pieces also have enough crevices and niches for individuals to snuggle together.

this was done with the aims to observe the sub-social structure of H. spinifer colonies... All these were raised from the captive-hatched broods by myself of a few gravid females I had bought from Cameron Highlands.

so there's no cannibalism between at all?? what about when one of them molts?? my AFS got cannibalized after it molted and how about when one of them become gravid and pops? do you remove the babies? i wanna do something like that with the new 13 2nd instars i have

All these adults consists of 4-6 specimens from the massive spawn of scorplings I bred from the 4 gravid Cameron Giants... they have been kept together as siblings in their respective batches between 4th to 6/7instar when more than half of them matured, I threw them all together in this tub


This what you see when you lift the bark.


Cannibalism in AFS only happens when they are not fed enough food. After raising scorplings to adults... they are always hungry. If they are peeping out of their holes with their chela outstretched, toss them a mealworm. I try to give one or two superworms for each individual but most of them would just be stuffing themselves with one i the mouth and one in each pincer. I feed them twice a week or anytime I see them parking out of their holes....

The case of cannibalism may happen with AFS of different species... that's why its always important to know what species your AFS or Heterometrus is... but because IDing is not accurate in immature specimens, its tough to know what your getting when you buy them as juveniles or not particularly sure of their origins. But because mine were captive bred I knew what they were after I identified all their mothers...

H. spinifer & longimanus (less in H. petersii) are generally un-problematic to keep in large densities. The golden rules seem to be these...

1. The size variance (or age difference) should not exceed 2instar levels

2. The communal enclosure must be large but more importantly have sufficient hiding spaces or substrate for them to dig out their communal dens.

3. Food must be given on a regular basis; Hets in generall are hole lurkers... they don't prowl around for food. They camp out waiting for movement... so it pretty kewl to throw them superworms and watch them go for it. Brief squabbles over food sometimes occur but never serious. The ones who eaten their fill go back deeper down into the burrow while the next shift takes position at the various holes. As long as I see them at the entrance... I know they want food. When they are all fed; after the pecking order is done, the tank will look empty in the day... even with 24 big Hets... more like 24 big Hets happily digesting their meals in the deep cool and dark security of their burrow.

4. The most important rule when putting together a community of adult Hets is... that they all have to be introduced at once at the same time. This is so that all members of this community settle their territories within that time frame. You don't have to dump the whole bucket of sprawling scorps in one hurl; you can gently place them in one at a time after another. Sporadically introducing strangers to the community within intervals of more than a few days is a BIG NO,NO because that community that has already established itself will perceive that new scorp as an outsider/intruder/food.

5. Exceptionally large adults of either sexes I think should not be communally kept as a general rule. These rogues demand bigger territories and behave more territorially than the regulars.

I'm studying their sub-social behavior... determining what are the finite parameters of how they interact with each other (which I'm in the process of compliling for a big article)... for creatures without an actual brain... my experience with them makes it difficult to renounce the notion that they are indeed endowed with individual personality which implies that either they do have a brain or that intelligence/learning/learned-behavior can exist without one.

wow. i like what you are doing. have to learn from you i'm only 15 so i dont know much about keeping scorpions. so far i have identified that the 2 adults i have are female. are females more common to find than males?? because all the wild caught specimens i have are female. have not got any luck finding a male, will try to find one next time. however, in the tanks you have, are they all of the same sex? and if they're not would the siblings breed with each other and would their offspring be born normal?? and what sized tank would you recommend keeping 13 scorplings about 3cm each in?? right not i'm keeping them in those carrier cages where you would keep turtles. is that big enough?

3cm.... hmmmm that's like 2nd instar (the 1st molt)... for Heterometrus and Pandinus imperator at least, my experience tells me the grower faster if you keep them with the mother...

What I would do if all your females are wild caught... just power feed them since they have most likely been mated already... If you plump them up over a a course of over a year and they still don't look like they're gonna pop... then you breed them...

If you want to breed them... keep the females separately... so they have their own space and security to brood.

*no... this is just an unsorted mix of captive bred scorpions... the surplus bin if you will but I'm taken some size data for comparison and kept the biggest ones... to re-breed in Borneo...

yup. i'm keeping them all together in one tank. but i rarely see them some out. i can see them at the side of the tank due to their burrowing activity. twice every week i kill a cricket and place it in front of the burrow. alright will do what you said. i've had them for 6 months already. only one popped. i cant breed them right now because i dont have a male... still looking though. thanks for your advice!

Interesting how quite a few of them are very light in color with some that are almost brown. Do you have any adults that have kept the coloration?
By the way, will we get to see this article you're compiling?

ive got an 18" x 18" x 18" exoterra tank and i have one heterometrus spinifer in there at the moment. how many more could i put in there without over crowding them??

mezzle992 wrote:

ive got an 18" x 18" x 18" exoterra tank and i have one heterometrus spinifer in there at the moment. how many more could i put in there without over crowding them??

Good question... my best recommendation would be to consider how deep you can have your substrate....

My substrate in this setup was not deep (2.5 inches), but I compromised with having a large floor space (2ftx1ft), and the half-buried driftwood logs + claypot shards provided many crevices allowing at least two sub-levels of tunnels...

12 scorpions per level... 6 scorps per square ft... a number surfaces entrances to the master underground complex they collectively dug out... individuals will snuggle together in batches of up to 4 in segregated niches... they will cycle surface patrols for food... the hungry ones stay closer to the surfaces... the full ones stay deep waiting to molt which happens underground mostly; other than a few cases where individuals came topside to molt.

In the wild They construct their burrows in a somewhat spiral direction among the roots of a large tree with out-branching 'bunks' for individuals to 'rest' in when they are full... the more peckish ones are topside at the entrances waiting for food...

They're are not overtly protective of other members within colony but neither are they overtly aggressive over one another. Outsiders (newly introduced scorps) may get some hostility in the initial stages...

The worst fights happen over food... when two individuals get into a short brawl cutting a cue over one super-worm... until the other realizes its raining Super worms again... lol

Some courtship behavior has been noticed... but it appears females are less receptive when living in a colony... probably to avoid in-breeding in colonies of siblings living together...

So ultimately how many you can squeeze into your currently-intended tank specs would depend on how you setup the enclosure interior

thats really cool ,i want to do that with B.jacksoni, not as many though lol

WOW there are Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaps in there

wow bet feeding time is fun to watch be good if you could post a video? i would love to have that many living together but i worry about the 2 p.imps we have already not eating each other lol (well its the female thats seems to be the aggresive of the 2)