White build-up on the Edvin.

Well, I have looked all over the internet to figure out what this possibly could be, and haven't found much of anything about it.

My emperor scorpion has had this white build-up on him for a while now. It started on his tail, but I've seen a little on his back recently. It doesn't look fuzzy or moldy, and there is no mold anywhere else in his tank. It just looks white and chalky. I know their feces can be white... but I also read that they are avid about cleaning themselves, so I have no idea why he would leave it on himself for so long.

I am wondering if perhaps it could be build-up from the water I mist the tank with, but I don't see this build-up anywhere else. Just on him. I might change the water I use, anyways, to see if it helps.

If anyone knows what this could be, that would be wonderful.

Also... is store-bought distilled water safe for them?

You might just have a lazy scorpion?

I suppose that could be a possibility. Haha.

Could be, give it a few days, it might decide it's time to wash.

My Emp is crazy about cleaning itself, does it almost daily, but it's incredibly lazy when it comes to food. I'll leave a locust in there, it will go near him, he'll move a few centimetres then think "Sod it." and goes back in his hole. A lot of times I have to wave it in front of his face to get him to eat.

So yeah, just might not a fan of washing. This probably isn't recommended, but have you tried getting the white stuff off yourself? If it's chalky then it's probably crap and you have nothing to worry about.

Hey there,

Yeah, distilled water is safe for them, but I like to use bottled mineral water.
The build-up on your scorpion has been observed before, but I never really saw an answer to it. I've only seen scorpions with stains on their exoskeleton because of owners using hard tap water. However, I don't know if this is the same case or not because people have said that it's more chalky than mere mineral stains.

Did you buy it like that? Another reason can be that it's clay from their natural environment before they were collected.

No, I didn't buy him like that. It's been there for at least a month. I'll try using the distilled water and maybe try swabbing him off with a cotton swab and see if that makes a difference. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't some disease or something that I couldn't find any information on. =P

Thanks for the answers so far. If anyone else has input, I'm still listening. =D

Can you get some pics for us? I've also found that all of the stories involved emperor scorpions or asian forest scorpions and no other species. It could be that the white marks are easily recognizable against their black armor, but who knows, it might be some sort of infection forest scorps get that we don't know about or simply hard water stains.

I can try... It might take a while, though. I don't have a camera, myself... and my own computer is not working. Could possibly borrow the parents' camera and computer for my scorpion picture-taking needs.

Had the same problem with my Hetero (I believe it was one of my first posts on this site).

Likely it's one of the previous suggestions. Hardened feces that just won't clean off, or as I found, just hard water.

I switched to bottled and it dissapeared, and I notice that it comes back whenever I move back to tap water (when I inevitably run out of bottled and fail to get more) for a long period of time.

Awesome. I'm so glad its probably not anything serious. He's really lazy, so I was hoping it was just buildup from the tap water that lands on him whenever he just sits there. Since it's winter and my home gets horridly cold, I keep the tank wrapped in a blanket... so he rarely feels the need to use his hide-outs. This results in long periods of just basking and evaporating. Haha.