Still thinking of tub incubating...

[Ginevive]

I have been thinking of using a tub in our rack to incubate the eggs.. I figure, the temps are right with the UTH, if I use a tub with no holes drilled, there's an awesome humidity holder. I would even put styrofoam insulating the opened parts of the rack..
Sound like a plan? I have a Hovabator, but it was the inc. wherein my last clutch went bad; maybe not its fault, but it worries me that it may have created hot.cold spots and the heat might not have penetrated into the rubbermaid that I used to hold humidity..
Any ideas on the tub idea? I would use UTHs to ehat the whole tub to a uniform temp, and place down a layer of vermiculite or hatchrite, then put the eggs in there..

[Adam_Wysocki]

There's a reason why there's not a single professional ball python breeder using maternal incubation on a regular basis ... it's a cr@p shoot.

Nothing wrong with hovabators ... keep your medium DRY ... you shouldn't be able to squeeze a drop of water out of it ... water kills eggs ... use a box with no holes in it .... 100% humidity ... put the box in the hovabator ... plug it into a helix ... put the helix probe in the box ... presto! ... 54 days later you'll get babies!

-adam

[Rapture]

I don't think she was shooting for maternal incubation, she wanted to use a shelf in her rack as an incubator.

[Adam_Wysocki]

I don't think she was shooting for maternal incubation, she wanted to use a shelf in her rack as an incubator.

Ohhhhh .... never heard of anything like that???? ... I'd be nervous about the heat not being even????

-adam

[Rapture]

The way my rack is made is it has 4" flexwatt installed as recessed belly heat... maybe if a rectangular-shaped tub was set on this strip long-ways it would have even heat distribution... I'm not real sure though.

Gineveve, maybe you should set up a practice one before you have any eggs and see how things go with that.

[Ginevive]

I think I will just go with the Hovas; I will need to buy two more but that's no matter. So you can completely seal the container and there will be enough air? That would make things so much easier.!

[Adam_Wysocki]

I think I will just go with the Hovas; I will need to buy two more but that's no matter. So you can completely seal the container and there will be enough air? That would make things so much easier.!

During the last two weeks of incubation, crack the egg container once a day ... that's all the air they need.

Been doing it 11 years that way and have never had a problem getting eggs to hatch.

-adam

[Ginevive]

Thanks! I am going to set up my incubators this week. I would hate it if I had eggs waiting for an incubator b/c of my own procrastination.

[tmlowe5704]

For the price of those why not just get an old ice chest and make your own that can hold more?

[Ginevive]

For the price of those why not just get an old ice chest and make your own that can hold more?

I am going to look into that after all. My fiancee is a property manager, and cleans out apartments in between tenants (tenants that often leave oweing months of back rent, leaving in the night and not taking their posessions, abandoning them for Mark to clean up.) But I am pretty sure that the one place has an old fridge in it..
Now, do you have to drain the freon, or have it drained, before use?
We have a small closet that I thought of using (used to do hydroponic gardening in it) but it is too large for now to be practical to heat.. now a few years down the road when we have more females breeding..