night temperature

Hi all. So I am thinking about setting up a group of emperor scorpions. The odd thing is that all the scorpions I have had in the past were from arid habitats and I never got around to any critters that needed high humidity.

The question I have is about their temperature overnight. Will there be a problem if their heat lamp is turned off at night? Our house temperature during most of the year drops down to 68-70F at night (during the summer it will be 75-80F).

I'd say that during the summer, the night temp is fine. During the winter, you could always put a heating pad on the back side of the tank.

Scorpion19981000 wrote:

I'd say that during the summer, the night temp is fine. During the winter, you could always put a heating pad on the back side of the tank.

+1 and i keep mine at room temp ever since 1st instar

Why turn off the heat lamp at night? It sounds to me that night is when you need it. If you keep one end of the enclosure at 90F (under the lamp) and the other end at room temperature (or tank temperature), you should be fine.

The wife isn't keen on lights left on at night, plus the emperors will probably be in my son's room. I could always use ceramic "bulbs" that don't give off light...but the easiest thing to do would turn it off, if that wasn't detrimental to the scorpions. Basically I am looking at my options...

Personally, I think 68F-70F is too cold for the entire enclosure, but Emperors are hardy scorpions and will probably do ok. A ceramic heat element would be a good solution to provide heat without light. I would avoid using a heat mat because they do a lousy job of getting heat into the enclosure, but any heat would be better than none.