death.....

i got my female set up with my male and i went to check on her today and she was dead.
i pulled her out and she was completely limp, tail laying flat on the ground.
i am not sure what killed her.
her burrow was under the heat lamp, do you thing that may have killed her?
or could it have been the male she lived with?

old age i would guess

stress aswell perhaps, i think i remember you saying your emps were fighting with her when you introduced her maybe that just stressed her out or she suffered some unseen injury, could be a possibility.

I hate to sound impersonal but with an animal such as a scorpion it is very hard to predict death. There are a number of factors that could of contributed to it but death happens. In my short year and a half or so of keeping arachnids I've lost at least 20 specimens (probably more, I'm slightly numb to it now). As you keep more and learn more about that you can hold off death usually.

Arachnids, even invertebrates in general, are an animal, very basic in nature granted, that are very poorly understood. I don't think anyone here has the training or experience to say this is exactly what you did wrong. With that I will say that for the most part external heating sources are usually unnecessary.

After speaking to someone a long while back I am now following the idea that no scorpion "enjoys" being communal (perhaps excluding Centroides). Being in such close quarters with an animal they may tolerate but neither trust nor fully accept could stress them to the point of death. My most long lived P. imperator was solitary its entire life. She eventually died and I have yet to remove her from her enclosure. Call it sentimentality. Said person that I spoke to also avoids this forum for reasons I do not agree with. However that does not make his observations any less valid.

After that very impersonal rant and expression of my opinion (forgive me, I am less than sober) I do feel like I must say, I am sorry for your loss. While I do have at least 3 of my original specimens I know loss after losing a C crawshayi (King baboon tarantula) and an Ornithoctinus aureatibalis (Tailand golden fringed tarantula). At least one being my fault. Do not let one death discourage you. If I had been discouraged after my first death I would not have gotten to the point where I could keep the species I had most coveted from the beginning. Even if you don't write it, remember her behavior so that will help you keep your next one even more well informed.

Good luck, and welcome to the harder part of the hobby.

People talk about most female emps in petstores being gravid because the vast majority are wild-caught -- however, for the same reason, it's impossible to tell the age of an adult you get at the store. My guess is that it's just old age.

I once bought a perfectly healthy-looking H. laoticus and had it die for a similarly unclear reason less than a month later.

well, i do recall seeing her telson looked a bit torn at its base. it is too late now to check,. i donated her body to a high school biology lab to be preserved in formaldehyde.
from this i have been steered away from arthropods a bit, but i prolly suppose that i shouldnt let such a thing as one dieing deture me.
i am going to decide if i want to get another emperor within a week or two. if i do ill let ya'll know and ask for a bit of advice most likely
on a lighter note, my male seems to be doing very well, always perking up and looking intimidating when i maintain his cage.

If we let a single unexpected death put us out of the hobby, I would have only been in it for about four months and never would have progressed to more than two species.

Any hobby involving living things will inevitably involve death, unless you plan on raising Galapagos tortoises.

Or parakeets... They refuse to die...

amen on that. my buddie has one, most annoying thing on earth!!!