het spinifers!

Hi all! I have 2 het spinifers. 1 male and 1 female. Can they be given tap water?I notice that some females in the shop also have pectines which are quite long but the operculum is a heart shape.I bought the female from the shop and it was fat.I tried mating them because I thought that the female was just eating alot.But they did not mate.I could not find any 'stalk' left from the male.Now the female has red colour on the sides of the cord on its back.Does this mean its pregnant?Or could it be a desease?

As for the long pectines -- some Heterometrus spp. just have huge pectines because they're just huge scorpions.

Most of the time, if you buy a female from a petshop, she's already gravid. And, gravid females tend to reject the mating advances of males. Seeing the nerve cord is usually a sign of being gravid (in adults, anyway).

If she looks really close (see pic here; this was about a month before popping), I'd separate the female, as mothers with a brood on the back tend to be more aggressive towards tankmates.

By the way, what's your tank setup like?

Oh, I almost forgot -- tapwater is fine.

I already seperated them.They live in a cage with a few inches of coco fiber and a piece of aquarium wood to hide under.I used the whole coco fiber block for the 2 scorpions.Is this enough for them?Thanks for the replies!

hmm.... my female looks like yours but I think mine is spinifer...aren't longimanus suppose to have long fingers?I live in Malaysia so these scorpions are normally wild cought.My pair might be longimanus and spinifer because the male has short fingers..

mr.modax,the photo of ur longimanus reminds me of my gravid spinifer..
i wont notice mine as gravid without that photo..

cocogecko,show some photos if possible..

edit:erm,if not mistaken,majority heterometrus sp found[wild caught] in penisular malaysia is spinifer..so urs may be a spinifer..i guess..

Yeah, that should be enough cocofiber -- I just wanted to make sure you had the right substrate

Yours are probably H. spinifer -- those seem to be the most common in the pet trade. I was just showing the gravid H. longimanus for illustrative purposes.

erm.. I just looked at the scorps closely and the female has longer fingers than the male.slightly longer, like a few mm.And about the photos.I took them already but there is a problem with the dumb camera.It all deleted because of a problem and now there is a problem with the chip reader too .So, sorry.Thanks for the info anyways.

why so care about the length of ' finger'?
a slightly longer pincher wont lead to a different species.
anw,where u from?which part of our country?

Females tend to be slightly larger in most species, anyway.

Ok, thanks for info.I live in KL.One more question..If a female is already pregnant, will a male even try to mate with her?Or if he tries she will reject the mating? The female has been eating alot lately.3 crickets were eaten this week.Sorry for being noob.I'm not so good at this thinks yet

or killed.

Killed isn't too likely . . . though some females tend to get awful grumpy at roommates when they're pregnant.

cocogecko wrote
"The female has been eating alot lately.3 crickets were eaten this week."

my 12 months old het spinifer just ate 5 crickets in 2 days!! put in 5 last tuesday, yesterday - none left!

one of my scorps once head crushed a locust then sort slappd it away and just left the body there lol gotta love there strange lil quirks

there were left-overs here n thr.. wings, bodies, backlegs etc.. looked like she had a feast by herself!

lycanlord19 wrote:

one of my scorps once head crushed a locust then sort slappd it away and just left the body there lol gotta love there strange lil quirks

lol, this is exactly what my Emp; who has fasted for well over a year; does. she will grab the food, shake it around, cruche the life out of it, then dump it on the substrate.


really, really annoying.

if its not adult it could be getting itself well fed for a molt.

no, Mines is an adult. she popped a brood a year ago.

I watched her eat the crickets until they were gone...