Hello! My name is Jeanette & my husband & I raise frogs of all types. Recently, a wish I have had for sometime has been answered & I bought an Emperor Scorpion for a pet. He is just a baby, born this past March. Between the internet information/misinformation & the petshop information/misinformation about scorpions, I almost accidently killed him last night. I need someone to give me the basics of Emperor scorpions care or a message board for scorps owners or an email of someone who could help. My problem is this: I set up his cage according to instructons from a website. They are tropical scorpions, not desert scorpions. I put my baby in a ten gallon tank with heating pad on one side, hiding place, waterdish, rocks, wood, eco-earth substrate & a glass lid plus crickets. This was Saturday. When I checked on him last night, he was almost dead. My husband & I plucked him out of his tank, sprayed him with cool water, wet a paper towel & placed him in a small plastic box with airholes. In minutes, he was recovered. We carefully went back over the care information we had been provided & found that most of it was incorrect (or seemed incorrect to us by reason of common sense) We have changed his set up quite a bit. Like the baby dart frogs we raise, he seems shy so we put him in a 5 gallon tank. Smaller & cozier. Threw the heating pads away. Threw alot of the fancy trimmings away - bark, rocks, etc. Basic cage with eco-earth, hiding spot, waterdish. Wire mesh lid. Daylight spot for heat & night-time red incandescent for night. I watched him most of last night & he seemed to be acting normally, checking out his new home. Am I on the right track here as far as set-up goes? (Also mist cage frequently) He showed absolutely no interest in the medium crickets he was given, either stepping over them, or swatting them out of his way. Large crickets simply annoyed him. Small crickets were invisible to him. I had been told that baby scorpions eat almost constantly. The pet shop says he just isn't hungry. Who is correct? Am I feeding him the correct thing the correct way? Is there something I should be doing that I'm not? Please help. I am new to scorpion care & am terrified that I'm not doing the right thing but I don't know whose advice to trust or whose advice to mistrust. It would absolutely kill me to lose him. Someone, please, please help me! Thank you in advance & kind regards, Jeanette (email: jjacks1@yahoo.com)
