Turning rainforest to desert???

[pandinusdealer9]

So here's what's up...

I have kept and bred pandinus imperator for several years now and I keep some other humid loving scorpions such as heterometrus scaber. I live in a very humid area of California, if anyone is familiar with humboldt county or the city of Eureka then you know what I mean! I would say we live in a rainforest, not a tropical rainforest but a temperate rainforest. My moisture loving scorpions do awesome and with a little heat added from a heat lamp in the winter and a mist bottle sprayed once a day they are in a tropical rainforest once again.

Now here's the problem...

I have also kept several desert scorpions including Hadrurus arizonensis from Arizona, dry capital of the US! They are very hardy scorpions and require little to survive. However humidity % only seems to go down when the heat goes up and no mist bottle is used! Well I thought if I want to keep the humidity down then I better make it hot like a desert?... wrong... I think the overall cause for the hadrurus death was too much heat! I forgot to take into account that not only does the scorpion hide during the day but underground is much cooler than above ground in the desert during the day!
So how do I get that humidity gauge to stay at 50% or lower when it goes right to 70% or more with no heat lamp and about 50% - 55% with a 40 watt nocturnal heat lamp pumpin at hi 80 to low 90 degree F temperature in the summer? When I did get the humidity to drop slightly lower than 50% it was on a hot day and the temp. with the heat lamp running was above 100 degrees F! A weekend of these conditions was what I believe caused the scorpions death especialy with no deep hole to hide in!

How to fix this problem?...

I imagine anyone living in a place like Arizona who breeds pandinus imperator would have the opposite problem which is quickly solved by more misting into the cage with a spray bottle but how does one who wants to eliminate humidity go about doing it to imitate a dry desert climate? I have heard of a humidifier in very dry places but is there some sort of device to get rid of extra humidity?
If anyone has suggestions, ideas, or knowledge of devices for solving this problem I would be interested to know!

Thanks,
David

 

[John Apple]

hello Dave
Just keep the substrate damp or like a lotta people do with geckos provide a damp hide box.
I have a friend in Arizona that keeps imperator in his yard in a large pen. They breed well for him . Ya see the thing is these guys will dig to get to the microclimates [habitats] they need.
Keeping humidity low is easy with an open air type enclosure or a heavy screen lid.
The box method works well as your desert scorps will utilise it as needed.
Hell I have some diplocentrus that like it humid but are allways under the humid box...heh go figure
peace

 

[Critterfarm]

Hadrurus sp. will be fine at ~70% humidity. In the wild they spend the majority of their lives dug in to humid microclimates and not at the dry surface. I've been keeping them for years, and I'm lucky to get the bug/frog/herp room under 70% humidity for even a few minutes lol. Just be sure to provide a heat sink ( I use slate) directly under a basking light for a hot, dryer spot for them after they molt.

I also keep some Hottentottia sp. from the Transvaal and some unidentified species from the Namib, who can not cope with humidity at the surface. I provide them with a deep substrate of sand and clay (10-12") with a standpipe in one corner to water the very bottom of the substrate 3-4x a year. This allows them to regulate their burrow humidity needs by altering the depth of their burrows. To keep the surface very dry, I use halogen lamps in dome fixtures, combined with low voltage PC fans mounted in the screen tops to move the air out of the enclosure. I can get the humidity up to 40% lower than ambient while still keeping the daytime temps under 100F. At night they are left to cool off, but the fans remain on. It must suit them, as I see babies riding on the mother every few months.

 

[pandinusdealer9]

Thanks for the advice...
I have been breeding Pandinus for a while now and have still not had any problems with them, however, I had one Hadrurus species and it lived for a while with out any misting and a red nocturnal heat bulb which was on a timer and would go on in the morning and off at night. I think it was a male and he died earlier in the summer because I think in my attempt to imitate desert heat and dryness with a daytime lamp it had gotten exceptionally hot one day and killed him even though he had some hides to run to!
I now have 2 female and 1 male Hadrurus and I keep each of them in a separate 10 gallon aquarium about half full of a sand substrate mixture. This time I put a piece of plastic aquarium tube running all the way to the bottom of each aquarium for pouring water into just so the bottom could be somewhat moist while the top stays dry. I also used 3 different mix amounts of substrate for the different depths. On the bottom I put a mix of coconut mulch, potting soil, and some sand, about 1/3 of each. Next I put a 1/2 mix of the previous mixture with a 1/2 mix of sand. Last I put a layer of desert sand on the top with some bits of bark and of course rocks set up as hides reaching all the way to the bottom so the scorpions can dig to the depth and moisture level needed.
Thus far they seem to be doing well but my plan is to attempt to breed them and I have heard so much about the difficulty in that. Hopefully it will all work out well. No overheating this time!

 

[Critterfarm]

Sounds like that will work, good luck with it.

Be sure to post any breeding success, as I think hobbyists are very close to cracking the successful breeding of Hadrurus scorpions. I've had several clutches myself, but none to survive to L2. Maybe your substrate mix can give better conditions for them to survive the first few molts.