death of a lychas mucronatus sling.

=( my first death, kinda saddened by it. what went wrong? the other 2 are still alive.. could it be the mold i mentioned in the other thread being the cause?

i flip the body and it was lifeless..... any chance it might be alive? humidity is fine.

the mold is only a slight possibility because they are bound to encounter certain levels of mold in the wild. I actually just threw one of my L. mucronatus in the freezer in the past couple hours too, it just never became active after I got it. stumbling around very slowly like it should have been moulting but never did and finally passed on.

i had 3, lost 1 and left with 2. that was 2 hours ago. now i have none. what on earth?

i'm thinking this is one freak accident... the first one died(it was my first death) and hence i didnt know what i was doin wrong.. some guy told me the substrate needed to be REALLY REALLY damp. n before that my substrate was jz moist.

so i thought the first fella must've died of dehydration. so i misted the other 2 slightly more den usual.. n they both died in 30 minutes... drowned i guess..n they got chomped down by their food(crickets).

im so freaking unhappy with myself.

perhaps the first one died of natural causes... but being the smart guy i am, i killed the other 2... losing 1 is bad enough but losing all 3... thats...nvm. i shouldn't have listened to the other guy but who's there to blame? myself.

Don't beat yourself up over this. We all make mistakes in this hobby, no matter how experienced we get.

I'm really sorry for your loss.

sigh i feel so terrible now.. its been hours. =/ anyway i'll be getting 2 more lychas sling n 2 jacksoni adults...hopefully everything will go fine.......

Best of luck!

thanks Mike.

Im sorry you had one death and then the following two. The "april" funk see!
I know its upsetting and super annoying but sometimes its just nature. Had you not had the mould or not even noticed the one dying, you could have gone out, come back and just found them all passed on.
Maybe something was wrong inside?

Im sorry.

xxxxx

You have to remember that in the wild only a few of those would actually survive. Sometimes they get eaten, and sometimes they just die. I always get a few deaths here and there when it comes to slings. My though...the scorpion was just weak. You have to imagine how weak these scorps are getting since most people are trying to keep ALL of them alive. Oh but thats a subject I'll get into another day.
-Eddy

the prob is all 3 died and i dont know wat was the cause. the latter 2 , i misted heavily.. but still is it possible for them to drown? =/

could starvation be the factor? they did not eat for a week and a half. I've read somewhere that juvies are to be fed twice a week.

I just wanna know what are the possibilities of their deaths so I don't repeat them again. Does air ventilation matter much to them? I had them in a delicup with 5 holes I screwed with a screw and a screwdriver.

p.s : the guy who sold it to me has plenty more lychas slings and none of them died on him.

that is interesting. the misting/drowning idea is out because they are called "chinese swimming scorpions" for a reason...they do fine if they end up in a little water - this is why I have an actual dish of water for mine. I actually don't feed my juvies more than once a week and have had no losses to starvation, drowning or cannibalization. I think you've got a freak incident going on

Yeah, I kinda scrapped the 'drowning' possibility after taking into account their common name. Afterall, it should be a frequent occurrence for wild specimens to be in a lil bit of water. However, my specimens were tiny 4th instars around 1.5cm from chela to telson and a lil bit extra water to us is plenty of water to them so?

Starvation also seems to be kinda far-fetched as scorpions are known to go for months without food. Seems like I'm running out of possibilities. A note just so you know, before I got them, their previous owner were feeding them twice a week since they left mum's back and when I got them, they did not eat for a week and a half and then died.


How's the ventilation like in your enclosure Ras?

I read from VenomList that Lychas Scutilus require high ventilation and since they're almost similar to Mucronatus in every way I figured that Mucronatus' should do better with higher ventilation. Your thoughts on this?

For the incoming slings, should I keep one side of the enclosure damp and the other side dry, just so they can pick whichever side they prefer?



Oh yeah, for the latter 2 freak deaths which happened in an hour or less, stress possibly? The crickets I threw in were slightly larger than them. A cricket was munching on one of the dead scorpions, perhaps the cricket killed it.

ventilation has not shown an effect on my Lychas which I keep at a medium. so far I've encountered no cannibalization and no problems with crickets. at 4i, I'm sure that the crickets aren't going to be able to take on the scorpion and win unless there's something wrong with the scorpion.

to be quite honest, your deaths have me completely stumped. if the scorps were in my hand I'd be able to see if there was a physical cause for the deaths or if I were there in their last days. I'm trying to picture it all but to no avail.

I really wish I could help, sorry that I'm a bit stumped.

When you say medium ventilation, what do you exactly mean?

I have my scorpions in a separate deli cup for each of them, 3 inches being the diameter of the delicup with 5 holes on the cover screwed through with screws.

Anybody else?

liette wrote:

When you say medium ventilation, what do you exactly mean?

I have my scorpions in a separate deli cup for each of them, 3 inches being the diameter of the delicup with 5 holes on the cover screwed through with screws.

I kept mine together in an 8qt sterilite tub with holes drilled across the top and sides. I'd post a pic but I just caught this post and I've got to hop in the shower before I head in to workenders in about an hour. I'll be back tomorrow night and I'll try and elaborate further then.

on a side note, my L. mucronatus took down 2 small crickets last night. a voracious little one for sure.

I prepared 2 deli cups for my pair of incoming L.Mucronatus slings earlier today. 4 inches in depth and 3 inches in width. I screwed 6 holes on the cover and 6 more scattered across the body of the cup. Hope that equals to medium ventilation.

Also, I got some garden soil and put them in the microwave for a couple of minutes to destroy harmful bacteria and such.

How often should I mist with this set-up? And by mist, I mean dropping droplets of water until the soil seems damp.