Breeding time is here. My P. transvaalicus

[Them]

I'm about to attempt breeding my group of Parabuthus transvaalicus and I'm starting to get them ready. I thought I'd post several pictures of one male and one female. There's a lot of pictures of these scorpions on the web but I thought some fresh images wouldn't hurt, especially for anyone really interested in them.

They are both 8th instar. Notice the difference of the chelae of the female versus the male's and also the body shape. The male is more slender and thin compared to the females fatter and more robust look.


Female

Male

 

[Masurai]

Nice looking P. transvaalicus. Good luck with the breeding

 

[Them]

I am going to attempt to post a video of my P. transvaalicus breeding. I've bred this particular female against three males, waiting 2 days apart between males. She was willing to breed for each one of them but seemed to lose interest after a couple of hours of courtship.

This is my first attempt at breeding this species so I'm sort of winging it. There really isn't any type of blow-by-blow explanation on the web or in books about how to do this, but the breeding went fine. I just set the female up in a 1 foot by two foot plastic shoe box container and dropped the male in there the next day. From what I've read on the web it seems that gestation is anywhere from 7 to 11 months. I'll have to wait and see.

Here goes...

 

[Galapoheros]

A good sps for the terr imo, not shy and a lot of action, for a scorpion. Some people still have trouble with them molting, no probs over here though. I've always thought some might be keeping them too dry.

 

[Them]

A good sps for the terr imo, not shy and a lot of action, for a scorpion. Some people still have trouble with them molting, no probs over here though. I've always thought some might be keeping them too dry.

I never had a problem with them molting either. I've always kept them extremely hot during the daylight hours, high 80's to low 90's and only gave them water every week and a half. Also, their water dishes are small bottle caps from bottled water that I place in one corner of their container. When I offer water I make a fast mist spray around the cap and let it hit the side of the container. That's it as far as moisture.

As far as substrate...I use a mixture of medium professional grade sand by Quikrete and another brand of coarser sand. In the video that sand in the container is just the medium Quikrete sand.

I think the trick with keeping this species is to keep them hot.

 

[Them]

Somebody asked me about the above video...

Place your cursor on the image and click. It will take you to one of my image hosting sites and the video will start.

 

[Galapoheros]

The substrate looks really good imo. I go to a river with a granite base and get coarse granite sand from there, I need to get some more. I like it around here but you can't grow much because of all the rock. These used to be hard to get in the US, not so hard to get them now.

 

[Them]

The substrate looks really good imo. I go to a river with a granite base and get coarse granite sand from there, I need to get some more. I like it around here but you can't grow much because of all the rock. These used to be hard to get in the US, not so hard to get them now.

In my travels around my state of CA I come across a lot of great looking sand and soil but you have to be careful digging up stuff around here. First off, they've dumped so many chemicals onto the ground because of agriculture, and there's also so many laws about touching anything in nature...There are some counties that have great "desert" type of sand. Some of it is really good to use as scorpion substrate - It's like a mixture of loose, fine sand along with crushed aggregate, a little bit of loam and tiny pebbles. Years ago, when I was younger, I worked for a oil company on a crew that went around fixing and servicing pump jacks and I used to have my hands in all types of this soil. Alas, that's when I was young and strong and didn't care about scorpions or working in 100 degrees plus all day.

 

[Galapoheros]

The direction some of the laws are going in is so ridiculous and unreasonable to me that I will ignore them, not encouraging anybody to break any laws of course. But if I think they are stupid and petty, I will de-brainwash a bit and ignore them. I got a warning ticket for having a scorpion in a container I caught without a hunting license I found on private property. I will keep breaking that law, it's just too brainless to follow that one imo. Yeah I'm not young either, though I can act like I am sometimes.

 

[the toe cutter]

Nice I have a gravid female right now though waiting for Parabuthus to pop seems like forever! Such a long gestation period with these. Good luck