Old Emp has mites (p.s long time no see!)

Hey guys, been a loooong time since I posted here but I've got a problem:

My old male emperor has mites by the looks of things. Saw his underbelly and saw some wee white specks hanging about in gangs at the endges of the plates on his belly (its been a long time so Ive forgotten all the sciency lingo lol)

Anyways, I was just posting here to see if anyone has any tips for delousing him.

Also, Ive spotted a couple black dots on his underbelly aswell, looks like it moght be that fungal disease that scorps get (again, forgotten the name). Anything I can do about that?

Any help greatly appreciated!

Thanks guys.

can you post a picture please?

Ill try but probs wont have much luck cause its a camera phone but ill give it a try tomorrow

Get some pics up.

If it is mites, the method I have used successfully to get rid of them is to either have a thorough clean-up of the enclosure or completely change the substrate. This gets rid of any cricket bits/poo that the mites will be living off (nearly every case of mites seems to be detritivorous species that live off waste in the enclosure and spend part of their life-cycle attached to a host i.e. your scorpion). Once I have done this, I keep the scorpion in as dry as an enclosure as is safe. Mites don't like it dry and will begin to die off in these conditions. For an adult emperor you should be able to completely dry out most of the enclosure and just provide a large water dish for it to hydrate. Obviously these are not ideal conditions for an emperor scorpion, but so long as it always has water available the scorpion should be fine.

I leave the scorpion in these conditions for as long as it takes the mites to completely disappear (I've found around a month is usual). Once the scorpion is clear of mites, I change it's substrate and provide it with normal conditions again, keeping up with the 'housework' (leftover food/waste plus very damp conditions are generally the cause of mites, or if you buy scorpions from a certain UK invert supplier.......).

I've used this method successfully even for slings that are far more susceptible to dehydration than adult scorpions.

Anyway, pics first to diagnose what's wrong with your scorpion.

Well, I've got to leave the house in like 5 mins so I can't elaborate, but take a look at this: http://www.scorpion-forum.com/t8383-how-to-ridding-tropical-enclosures-of-mites

Scorpion19981000 wrote:

Well, I've got to leave the house in like 5 mins so I can't elaborate, but take a look at this: http://www.scorpion-forum.com/t8383-how-to-ridding-tropical-enclosures-of-mites

Hypoaspis miles are great. I've not used them for mites, but I have for the fruit fly problem in my shed. Let these little murderers free and they'll rid your enclosures of every micro-beast in there . The only problem is you have to buy quite a large quantity of them so they're not very economical for using on just one tank (about £18 including p and p). They do work very well though if you do decide to use them. You can buy them HERE.

Well id say £18 would be worth it, hes my oldest pet and i want to keep the bugger alive as long as possible lol ill try and get pics up tomorrow, thanks guys!

welcome back to the forums, scorp whisperer

The-Scorp-Whisperer wrote:

Well id say £18 would be worth it, hes my oldest pet and i want to keep the bugger alive as long as possible lol ill try and get pics up tomorrow, thanks guys!

Cool. They come highly recommended.

How old is your emperor by the way?

Exoticvirus: thanks, got a lot of updating to do to my profile aswell I see haha :-P

Callum B: I bought his as an adult 6 years ago so im.guessing he's maybe 7 or 8 years old at least, but could be older for all I know. Hes outlived everything, he even survived being (accidentally) poisoned by mum when she sprayed the viv with vinyl cleaner instead of water when I was on holiday once lol. The old buggers bomb proof :-P

Just out of interest, I assume I could keep him on dry newspaper/papwr towel for a month and that would work the same, aye? Gonna try and get pics up when I take him out to clean the tank.

Thats the setup Ive put him in for now, if Ileave him in there for a few weeks and just keep the water bowl topped up should that clear the mites?

And this is a pic of his underside, hopefully you can see the mites and black spots (using a phone camera so not the best)

Also soz for putting the pics in 2 separate posts but im using a mobile and its a headache posting 2 pics on the same post.