I got home from the pet store, where I was buying crickets for my animals. I looked for my female AZ bark, but she wasn't in her usual spots. I look around and there she was at the very top of the tank as far as she could go. Apparently the magic number is 3 months. She looks like she has 15 or so beautiful new babies. I only found one little guy that didn't quite develop right. It must have rolled down the rock. I followed some of the posts and got her into her own setup. Thanks everybody for your help with sexing and trying to identify if she was gravid.
The timeline details:
WC with mate in October 2007 (Arizona)
Witnessed taking spermatophor in beginning of November 2007
Embryos visible through membrane after about 2 months
Jan. 19th at 6:54pm, I count at least 16 with one undeveloped that was discarded.
She was moved to a small critter keeper with a very similiar setup to her original setup. The temp is 80 one side and 87 on the other. Around 25-30 % humidity.
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9:00pm on the 20th. Just a little update on Mama Sculpturatus. She hasn't moved very much and remains very inactive. The babies have begun loosing some of their stores as you can see in the picture below.
I did a baby count and I only see roughly 13 and I originally came up with 17 as the magic number. I have been checking on her quite frequently and haven't witnessed her making a snack of any of her brood. They are likely just on top of each other.
Below is also an overall picture of her in her new enclosure.
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21st of January, actually the 22nd but only by a few minutes. I took more pictures of the mama and her babies about 4 pm. The babies seem to becoming more active and loosing more of their stores.
I still appear to have at least 13 babies but they are definitely growing.
Mama has relocated to a non-inverted spot, I'm guessing because she is finally getting used to her new surroundings.
-Dustin
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01/22/2008 @ 10:21PM. There is no real update. Mama hasn't moved and babies are still losing their stores. Here is another picture from today.
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01/23/2008 @ 10:24PM. Still no update. The babies are continuing to loose their stores. They have slimed out quite a bit and are starting to look more like scorps, not fat tictacs. In this picture mama was a little annoyed with me.
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01/24/2008 @ 10:15PM. Well this morning I decided to look at mama and see how things are going and looky what I found.
I was extremely surprised. After I got back from work around 6:00pm I found mama with her freshly molted babies and some left over skins next to her.
Here is a picture to put their size into perspective.
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01/25/2008 @ 7:32PM. No update. The babies are starting to move a little on the mothers back. I am preparing the containers now for seperation when they are ready.
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01/26/2008@ 11:45PM. Most of the babies have left the mother's back but are huddled underneath her. When they start venturing out a little I will try to separate them. I finally finished the scorpilngs new home and I'm just waiting to transfer them. These new enclosures will stay at 85 during the day and about 78 at night with 20-30 percent humidity minus the weekly mistings.
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01/27/2008 @ 9:09PM. Well today was a big day. I seperated the babies from the mother using a metal spoon. When I first uncovered the mother's den I only saw roughly 8 scorplings. I thought she had eaten most of them, but as I started moving stuff out of her cage I found many of these little guys hiding. My original count was 17. To my surprise, after moving all the young to their new homes, I found 18 total. What a surprise. I also had the pleasure of one of the scorplings running all over my hand. They were extremely difficult to remove from the bark. I just nudged them enough and they would dart. The after removing all of the young including the one on mama's back I tried to feed the mother. She wasn't even getting into a defensive posture. She must be really weak. I might squish a cricket or something and leave it in there to see if she will eat. I took a couple of pictures to give you an idea of how small these guys are and a picture of my new setup.
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01/28/2008 @ 7:00PM Well I decided to try to feed the mother again. This time she went into a flury. She killed the adult cricket extremely fast and drug it inverted to consume it entirely. With my new additions to the family I decided I will start breeding crickets mainly because I can't stand roaches and my girlfriend won't allow me to breed them.
All the babies look healthy and continue to run around at night. I will try feeding and give a report on the results.
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01/29/2008 @ 1:02AM Well tonight I tried to feed all of the scorpling baby crickets. It took forever to make it through all 18 but here is the break down. 7/18 ate in front of my eyes (sorry I didn't have a camera handy) Of these 7, 3 were fairly agressive. From the other 11, half showed interest but were too scared to attempting anything more than an brush. A couple would simply not come out of hiding.
I began a list last night of behaviors and attitudes. This will help track the individuals through their growth.
11 did not kill the cricket and eat them and for those I squeezed the crickets head and left them in a uniform spot in all of the individual containers for easy identifying if they have eaten.
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01/30/2008 @ 9:24AM I briefly checked the different enclosures and I can't find any of the crickets that I left. Only one mangled carcass. A few of the eaters from last night were still munching. When I return from work I will look through the individual containers to see if/if not there is indeed a cricket. My guess is that the next feeding will go smoothly now that they have an idea what a cricket is.
A little update for this afternoon. I checked the status of which scorplings have eaten. So far all but 6 I can verify has eaten. Of the 6 some might have but I couldn't say for certain. All of the cricket moved from their original location, but I am going to assume that they did not eat.
Well today yielded another wonderful surprise. I was checking #4s eating status. I quickly found her and she was quite plump. Then I say something moving behind her. It was another scorpling. This one not as big. Now I am up to 19. The only explanation was that the bark I used in the cage was from the original critter keeper and she was tucked away out of sight. Now I am going to start building a spreadsheet that I can use to keep track of the babies.
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02/04/2008 @ 11:46PM Just an update. The babies seem to be growing pretty nicely. I am going to try to feed them again tomorrow.
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02/05/2008 I fed them small crickets again. The outcome was as follows 5 out of 19 killed and began eating the cricket in front of me. For the remainder, I left dead crickets so they can eat later without worrying if the crickets will naw on the babies.
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02/07/2008 Today I checked on their status and lightly misted their enclosures. After examination I found 7 out of the 14 dead crickets that I left were at least partially consumed. Unfortunately I found 2 scorplings ( #9 and #15) that did not make it. I'm not sure why. My records show that 1 of them had eaten and the other had not.
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02/15/2008 Well today I tried to feed the scorplings again. This time instead of using small crickets I found a local pet shop that carries a variety of cricket sizes. I chose the 2 week old because the pinheads look too small as well as the fruitflies. I was pleasantly surprised that 15 out of the 17 killed their crickets and began eating them. This proves to me that the easier the ability to overpower the prey the more likely they are to attempt killing. The other 2 might have killed their prey but I could not tell visually. The scorplings are bigger, some more noticeably than others.
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02/24/2008 I again fed the scorplings 2 weeks old crickets and every one of them ate.
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02/26/2008 Here is a little update on the scorplings. Here is what most look like as of today.
This morning I noticed that one of them had molted.
Here is a picture of the new 3I standing next to his old exo.
This picture is a comparison of a 5I to a 2I.
I have also been keeping an up-to-date excel sheet on each of the babies that you can view here.
http://www.geocities.com/athlon2k2/C.Sculpturatus.xls
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03/06/2008 - Here is another update. They have all eaten again. Several more have molted to 3I. No complications yet. During the last couple of weeks I have been misting once a week instead of once every two weeks. It seems to be working so I won't change my patterns. The two pictures below are of a 3I in defensive curl and the newly acquired molts next to fairly new 5I molt.
