Dear friends,
I am a newbie, but have years of experience with tarantulas. That doesn't qualify as scorpion experience, but I just wanted to put my experience in context and say that I listen carefully to your advice here. A couple of weeks ago I bought a pair of H. petersii. I made what I feel is a pretty decent setup in a 20 gallon long, with two hides, 2-6" of coconut fiber, with a shallow water dish, dimmed 75-watt red infrared heat lamp (set to about 80%), and covered with aluminum foil over the 90% of the lid. The female seems to be doing well, extending her flower pot hide into a burrow. The male always seemed much more defensive and less prone to enter a hide. The temp has been maintained to no more that 86-ish at the hottest part of the day, with the dimmable lamp pointing on one side. The short of it, the dampness of the soil seems right to me and so does the temperature. Yesterday I saw him stilting and with his metasoma partly extended. From your other posts I see that this is not good. I guess I should have removed him then because today when I came home I saw him either freshly dead or on the threshold of death. Upon removing him, I saw no mites, but he did have no space between his dorsal and ventral tergites--maybe dehydration after death? Do you guys have any idea what happened? Old age? Disease? How do old scorpions usually die? Thank you in advance for your responses.
