Apparently this is quite a hard species to breed but i managed it lol!
Bought a M & F. They did mating dance but the male got pooped out too quickly and the female promptly ate him while i was cooking tea!
Bought another male, they mated. while they were finishing off my daughter woke up for her bottle... by time i had come back downstairs.. the male had been killed again (note to self NEVER breed scorpions when you have young kids and you're a single mum!)
The tank set up was riverbed sand with some broken sandy coloured bathroom tiles arranged to make lots of small crevaces. small waterbowl and a couple of rocks for her to climb.
The substrate was moistened at one end and bone dry at the other.
Temp wise it was about 27degrees C Daytime temp and about 18 Degrees C night time
Feeding once a week with about 4-5 brown crickets and occasional wax worm or locust
Any how, after about 12 mths of waiting for her to drop some scorplings i had given up on her being pregnant and thought she was just a greedy lady! however between 18-20months, on new years day 2005 I walked by the tank and thought i saw maggots out of the corner of my eye. my initial thought was oh god she's dead... then i looked closer and there were 6 scorplings on her back and another in her hide. this must have been the first one she dropped and she didn't manage to get it on her back. it was alive but knowing how these scorpions are i had to leave it to die in order to make sure she didn't turn on her brood.
This was about 4pm in the afternoon. over the next 10 hours she gave birth to a total of 32 scorplings. 1 died in the hide and another was born doubled over and had died instantly. but 30 went on to be very healthy. This i have read is the average max these scorpion give birth to.
All 30 survived their first slough and by time i started to sell them when they were about 6 mth old, all 30 had survived their next slough.
After 7-10 days of being on the mothers back i very carefully put them in deli containers and grouped them into 3's because at this young age they can still live together. As time went on (about 3mth) i had to separate them individually because the stronger scorplings were eating their weaker siblings food. once separated they flourished. but they were also separated because i didn't want to lose any through canibalism
In the first month they ate 1 cricket of appropriate size then on to 2-3 of appropriate size as they got older.
The last ones i sold were 1 year old and had sloughed 3 times, and i have been told that they are still going strong 2 years on.
So all in all a success story with a difficult to breed species. I thought it was even more of a success baring in mind i had a young daughter running about the place who bashed the tank a few times with her toys...
Lol gimmee emps to breed i cant get them to do it... give me something difficult to breed i manage it!! Madness!
Anyhow hope this helps anyone breeding this sp. These photo's aren't brilliant my camera was cr*p at the time, but you can see all ya need to see!
