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- May 29, 2004
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With the growing popularity of the Scorpion Hobby, it is obviously neccessary to learn all we can about breeding and culturing them in order to keep all the desired species in our hobby.
What is a "Bark Scorpion"? Typically they are from the Family Buthidae and the genera Centruroides, Tityus, Rholapurus, Isometrus, Lychas, Babycurus and probably others that arent very common in the hobby at the moment. These "Bark Scorpions" are found in a variety of different habitat including Rainforest, Desert and Temperate areas. They are not burrowers and some even call them arboreal although many species are seldom if ever actually found in trees but under stones, logs and other ground litter.
After having some failures of early instar "Bark Scorpions" mostly during molting I have learned that providing them with vertical climbs seems to have almost eliminated molting problems. When provided a climb they almost always molt facing down. Perhaps gravity actually helps them molt more easily although this is speculation.
Here is how they prefer to molt
With this in mind, I keep all scorplings in small vials with a piece of tree bark that stands up. This also is good in case the substrate gets a little too damp for the scorpling when water is added.
As the scorplings out grow the vials, they can then be moved into deli cups but it is still wise to provide a piece of verticle structure to climb on.
Before I started doing this, I had about 70% mortality during molting but now the deaths are virtually non existant.
What is a "Bark Scorpion"? Typically they are from the Family Buthidae and the genera Centruroides, Tityus, Rholapurus, Isometrus, Lychas, Babycurus and probably others that arent very common in the hobby at the moment. These "Bark Scorpions" are found in a variety of different habitat including Rainforest, Desert and Temperate areas. They are not burrowers and some even call them arboreal although many species are seldom if ever actually found in trees but under stones, logs and other ground litter.
After having some failures of early instar "Bark Scorpions" mostly during molting I have learned that providing them with vertical climbs seems to have almost eliminated molting problems. When provided a climb they almost always molt facing down. Perhaps gravity actually helps them molt more easily although this is speculation.
Here is how they prefer to molt
With this in mind, I keep all scorplings in small vials with a piece of tree bark that stands up. This also is good in case the substrate gets a little too damp for the scorpling when water is added.
As the scorplings out grow the vials, they can then be moved into deli cups but it is still wise to provide a piece of verticle structure to climb on.
Before I started doing this, I had about 70% mortality during molting but now the deaths are virtually non existant.