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 Dead scorpion...help please

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MajorMorbid
Pandinus



Number of posts : 3
Age : 33
Registration date : 2011-12-10

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PostSubject: Dead scorpion...help please   Dead scorpion...help please Empty12/10/2011, 5:26 pm

So today i awaken to a dead scorpion .... Ive been thinking she was pregnant because her sides have been bloated for about 2 weeks now. Ive had the scorpion for about 2 and a hal months now. I bought it from petco and the guy said she was a female oh and she was livin with about 6 other scorps an was the largest of them...when i got her home i opened the box she was in to put her in her new home and i noticed her sides (the gray area in the abdomen) were tinted a brown color so i dismissed it an put her in her home and misted her good daily and hoped itd leave well in about a week it was gone and she was a nice white gray color everything was goin fine but about 2 weeks ago i noticed she was huge in the lower part of her upper abs so i thought...YESSSSS!!!!! Babies! But about a week ago i noticed a spot of the brown come back and she started acting funny like curling up for long periods of time....

Click here to view:

She hasnt ever curled up like that before but about 3 days after that pic was taken i changed her tank bedding with some new coco fiber which came in the compressed dehydrated form that you have to soak...anyways point is after the 30 mins it takes to fully soak up the water i wrung it out by hand and stuck it in a bag and let it set for about 10 mins and changed her bedding to the new and put her back in...could that have any effect on her? Btw i forgot to mention the old bedding had some strange worms in it that came with the crickets nasty little things that ran around eating all the dead cricket bodies and my cricket food after 10 showed up there was 20 in no time after a while there was about 60 before i got em out of there...could they have had any effect? But after i put her in her new home with fresh bedding the next day i noticed she was flat as a pancake so i put a pencil in front of her to test and se if she was dead and she went mad on it and started attackin it like crazy with her pinchers so i let her go expecting it to maybe just be a phase of the pregnancy ...well today i wake up to find her dead without a stinger where the crickets ate it off......im just trying to find a reason why she died i was so excited to see new little babies i was misting her 2-3 times daily i made sure she had a constant humidity of around 70% and the temp stayed at 80 in the day and 75 at night she had a dozen crickets and a self filling water bowl so im puzzled as to what couldve killed her any help would be greatly appreciated thanks


Last edited by GS on 12/11/2011, 8:44 am; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : Updated image link)
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Den
Babycurus
Den


Number of posts : 290
Age : 51
Registration date : 2011-10-27

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PostSubject: Re: Dead scorpion...help please   Dead scorpion...help please Empty12/11/2011, 11:42 am

Quote :
Btw i forgot to mention the old bedding had some strange worms in it that came with the crickets

They were probably Dermestid beetle larvae and are nearly always found with crickets.. Cricket breeders use them to keep their cricket populations clean as they eat dead crickets and cricket waste.

When i look at the pictures i'm not sure i'm looking at a adult emp. The telson looks as if it could have been a bit darker in colour.....and if not i have a good idea what killed your emp..So please excuse my bluntness when i say..."You did!" albeit inadvertently.

You imagined your emp was gravid but i imagine a sub adult..The bloated sides wasn't because of pregnancy but because of pre-moult...It was getting ready to moult, not give birth! The last picture of your dead emp shows it in moult position.

Quote :
she had a dozen crickets

This coupled with the fact that you changed her substrate (which wasn't deep enough or damp enough judging by the pics!) thereby disturbing her at a critical time is what killed her!....She or he was attempting to moult and those crickets didn't give her the peace to do it....Never, and let me repeat that again NEVER have so many crickets running around in an emp enclosure when the scorp is in pre moult. In fact i wouldn't have that many crickets in a enclosure regardless of development cycle .. Ideally you shouldn't have had any crickets whatsoever in that enclosure because if there's one thing crickets can do and that is kill pre moulting scorpions..They don't do it by attacking them..they do it by nibbling them and crawling over them and generally disturbing them when the scorp is trying to moult..and even if it could have moulted the crickets would undoubtedly have killed it straight away afterwards...A freshly moulted soft scorpion could never hold it's own against so many crickets!! ..Moulting is extremely demanding on a scorpion and the slightest disturbance can easily cause the moulting process to halt..especially if the disturbance is at a critical point..Once halted it's tough or impossible for the scorpion to reinitiate it again...they basically die of exhaustion before they can get out of their old moult...I have a strong suspicion that that is what happened to your emp.

Quote :
she started acting funny like curling up for long periods of time

That's not acting funny...that's trying to loosen itself from it's old moult...and i see no hide or burrows (again not deep enough!) in those pics....so it looks as if it was forced to try and moult on the surface of the substrate allowing the crickets even easier access to it .. Poor thing!....I'm afraid your own inexperience is what killed it...perhaps another time you'll try and learn a bit more about scorpions before you get one!!

Quote :
i was misting her 2-3 times daily

Outrageous! ... I can only surmise that because of it's lack of hide or burrow you would also have been misting water directly onto her.

Quote :
so i put a pencil in front of her to test and se if she was dead and she went mad on it and started attackin it like crazy with her pinchers so i let her go expecting it to maybe just be a phase of the pregnancy

Again..outrageous...change of substrate, crickets all over the place, misting your emp and disturbing it with a pencil.....All this while it was probably trying to moult...no wonder it died!!

This is probably not the answer you was hoping for and i apologise if i come over as a little tough with you....it's just so sad when a scorpion is killed by a keepers inexperience..........Another time don't automatically think "pregnant" when you see a scorpion with bloated sides...think "maybe pre-moult"... Incidently the gestation period for an emp is approx 7 to 9 months so even if it was a gravid female she wouldn't have given birth any time soon..From bloated sides to birth can easily take 4 to 6 months..





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Scorpion19981000
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Scorpion19981000


Number of posts : 1895
Age : 26
Location : Cortland, New York
Registration date : 2011-07-03

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PostSubject: Re: Dead scorpion...help please   Dead scorpion...help please Empty12/11/2011, 12:23 pm

@ Den---- I agree with you about the stress. But the emp looks adult to me. It's possible that it was in premolt, but I think that is rather unlikely. (The color of the telson)

MajorMorbid wrote:
Ive been thinking she was pregnant because her sides have been bloated for about 2 weeks now. Ive had the scorpion for about 2 and a hal months now. I bought it from petco and the guy said she was a female oh and she was livin with about 6 other scorps an was the largest of them...

@ Major Morbid----- In the future, don't assume it's gravid. Also, are you sure it's a female? Just because "the guy at petco" said it was, does not mean it's true. When a scorpion is gravid, it will look massive.

You were putting alot of stress on your scorpion. When a scorpion starts acting odd, leave it alone! You can increase the humidity but don't do much else. If it starts acting like it's going to die, put it in ICU.




Perhaps it had a internal parasite.
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Den
Babycurus
Den


Number of posts : 290
Age : 51
Registration date : 2011-10-27

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PostSubject: Re: Dead scorpion...help please   Dead scorpion...help please Empty12/11/2011, 1:31 pm


Quote :
I agree with you about the stress. But the emp looks adult to me

You are of course correct that the telson does look like that of an adult animal but i got to thinking that a couple of the pictures have an overall red hue to them and these are the only pics where you can clearly make out the telson plus the tergate plates seem to be well splayed and the dead scorpion is in a classic moult pose......If the telson was lighter in colour, it could be the red hue that is giving it the appearance of being redder than it is in reality.

Still...my shoulders are wide enough to admit i could have shot by the mark and if that's the case then i apologise to you MajorMorbid for the presumptuous tone of my post.

Although whether it was pre-moult or some other factor there's no doubt in my mind that your keeping of this emp contributed greatly to it's death or at the very least hastened it enormously.

Don't have a lot of crickets loose in an enclosure regardless of development.
Don't mist 2 or 3 times a day..dampen the substrate more and seal the enclosure to keep humidity in.
Don't poke, prod or disturb in any way a suspected ill scorpion.
Provide a deeper substrate for your emp to dig a burrow in and provide a hide until it has done that. Emps don't live out in the open-
And finally ... read up about your intended scorp before you get it....2 clicks would have told you for example that emp babies would never be expected a few weeks after an observed swollen mesasoma.



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MajorMorbid
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PostSubject: Re: Dead scorpion...help please   Dead scorpion...help please Empty12/11/2011, 9:55 pm

I appreciate the reply i just wanted to know what i did wrong i didnt know having a dozen crickets with the scorp could be harmful ill remember that in the future and no im not for sure if it was a female for sure or not but i just assumed because she was quite a fair size and the substrate was low because i was trying to keep the dead crickets out because they were stinking and i was out of soil to replace what id scooped out also the pics were takin while she was still alive also i had one of the log hide outs in there and a flat rock propped up in there for her to get under she was using both and as for misting i have a screen top 10 gal which ive been covering with a towl and lifting and misting i havent been sprayin her directly but im sure some of it landed on her when i bought her i didnt get any kind of care sheet and i looked up the most basic things and went with it i figured it was a fairly low maintenance creature since i wasnt force fed a care sheet like everything else i bought from there but im glad someone replied it was very useful now ill know not to do that again and what to look for thank you
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Scorpion19981000
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Scorpion19981000


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Location : Cortland, New York
Registration date : 2011-07-03

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PostSubject: Re: Dead scorpion...help please   Dead scorpion...help please Empty12/12/2011, 12:42 am

MajorMorbid wrote:
when i bought her i didnt get any kind of care sheet and i looked up the most basic things and went with it i figured it was a fairly low maintenance creature since i wasnt force fed a care sheet like everything else i bought from there but im glad someone replied it was very useful now ill know not to do that again and what to look for thank you
We have a good caresheet here and here is another good caresheet by GS.
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Ludedor24
Babycurus



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PostSubject: Re: Dead scorpion...help please   Dead scorpion...help please Empty12/12/2011, 8:00 am

Looking at how just the last few body segments are spread it could have been impaction Sad
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MajorMorbid
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PostSubject: Re: Dead scorpion...help please   Dead scorpion...help please Empty12/13/2011, 2:30 am

Ok thank you scorpion19981000 and what causes impaction ludedor24?
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Den
Babycurus
Den


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PostSubject: Re: Dead scorpion...help please   Dead scorpion...help please Empty12/13/2011, 5:14 am

Sorry to butt in here when you're waiting for a reply from Ludedor but i'm sitting at home with a storm wailing outside and nothing to do .. so let me try and explain it to you.

Impaction is a term referring to a blockage and if you're talking scorpions then that would most likely be a faecal blockage..Constipation would be a similar description.

If you type impaction in google you'll be able to find quite a bit about it but try typing "impaction in scorpions" and you'll be able to read a few posts from other scorpions keepers .. Basically though it's a theory the same as so many other theories that is based on an idea without any real proof to back it up ... The trouble is, scorpion somantics is almost none existent so all we can really do is guess our way forward to a problems source. However from what i can read it goes a little like this .. The scorp becomes constipated (possible reasons are genetic, parasitical, physical damage and stress) and can't release it's faecal waste..This builds up in it's intestinal tracts thereby creating pressure on other organs which eventually kill the scorpion. Alternatively it's intestinal tracts can rupture releasing faecal matter into the body which of course would be toxic to the body which also could result in death to the scorpion.

It's an explanation that bears the hallmarks of common sense and which therefore has been accepted as a possible cause of scorpion mortality..........waiting for the onslaught Wink

A possible scenario for your scorpion could be this ... You noticed a brown stain on the side of your scorpion which might possibly have related to a rupture of some kind in your scorpion although you also mentioned it seemed to clear up after approx a week. A short time later you observed this brown mark had reappeared together with strange movements..You then changed the substrate as well as doing other stressful things and eventually your scorpion dies.....There's only one thing in my mind that speaks against this being a case of impaction and that is that you observe that the brown mark disappears...If it had ruptured inside and the brown mark you saw was indeed faecal matter then where did it go and how did it get better?

Yeh..all we can do MajorMorbid is guess .. That's why the best thing to do is simply make sure we provide the correct care and environment and hope our scorpions live out their lives healthily.
Unless a cause of death is obvious (a heavy object fell on it, attacked by another scorpion, acute dehydration or some other obvious explanation) we're all usually fumbling in the dark.

If you get another emp try and remember that they can easily go a month or longer without feeding (especially males!) and when they do feed it'll be one or two crickets, no more...A basic rule of thumb is this...put food items in the enclosure just before the lights turn off and if you notice the food item is still there the next day take it away and try again a few days later..If the same thing occurs then give it a week before you try again...If you're in doubt about anything (pre-moult, gravid, ill) don't feed or if you do then make sure the food item is already dead. Never leave crickets of roaches in with your scorpion for long periods...Ideally anything that is not eaten after being in an emp enclosure for one night should be removed the following day.

Scorps don't see that well at all and experience their world through the sense of touch and vibration...A content scorpion that isn't hungry will experience any kind of vibration as an annoyance..continual vibrations (any movement!) will go from being annoying to being stressful..Stress through longer periods can be fatal because as in humans, stress compounds other physiological factors.

Ok.....I'll stop here. The storm sounds as if it's picking up so i'd better get into my storm gear and see if there's any damage around the house...


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