mini fridge incubator questions/need advise

newbie here, but a lurker for along time. hopefully will have a few cluthes for the first time and i have a few questions on incubators. i finally found a nice small coke fridge with a glass door to build my first incubator. i've been doing a lot of browsing on these incubators and have some questions. on almost all the ones i have seen have the heat tape in the back of the fridge. does it need to be? or can i have it going down both sides and the bottom or is this overkill. water bottles? are they really needed, i get what there for,but does it really take that long for the fridge to come back up to temp. and even if it take say 20minutes, will it have a drastic impact on the eggs and their hatching. Fan? does it go on top and does it run 24/7 or are they run on a timer. will try and post pics of my build once start it and finish it when i learn how to post pics. lol . i'm not that tech savy. thanks in advance to all.

Jim

For my incubator, placing the flexwatt on the back wall of the fridge was the best (and pretty much only) option due to how the sides are set up for shelving. It also let me do a clean install where I inserted my connecting wires through the fridge's drainage hole. Where you install the flexwatt is up to you, but for the most part, the back wall is typically the most convenient place to do this.

As far as water bottles are concerned, I'd recommend them. Besides the case of helping to keep temps when you open and close the incubator, they're helpful in a case where you might lose power for a short while and should help to temporarily keep the temps up. If anything, it won't hurt having them in there.

I have my fan on top blowing down the length of the flexwatt. I run it 24/7 and don't have any hot spots within the incubator. If you want, you can connect the fan to a rheostat to control the speed at which is operates.

As far as posting pics is concerned, check out this thread. It's very helpful. :)
http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...with-pictures)

thanks Tim. i just checked out your AMP incubator. nice by the way. my fridge is similar in size,but the back wall of it is not even/flush. that is why i wondered if heat tape could come down the sides instead of the back. shelfs should not be a problem with the gap. what is the length of heat tape you used? and where do you get a fan like yours at?
thanks
Jim

I used a foot of heat tape. Didn't use a fan but I did use tubs full of water. Worked fine for me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sugar shane

thanks Tim. i just checked out your AMP incubator. nice by the way. my fridge is similar in size,but the back wall of it is not even/flush. that is why i wondered if heat tape could come down the sides instead of the back. shelfs should not be a problem with the gap. what is the length of heat tape you used? and where do you get a fan like yours at?
thanks
Jim

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Thanks Jim! The length of flexwatt I used was about a foot and a half, so slightly less than the incubator's wall height. I don't see an issue with installing the flexwatt on the side of the fridge. This DIY thread shows just that and it works quite well.
http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...bator-Tutorial

The fan came from computer supplies that were lying around the office, but it's a 12V DC fan that's 80mm.

You could get something like this to power a DC fan and control how fast it's operating:
http://www.coolerguys.com/840556093725.html

And get a 12V fan. This is just an example, but you could get smaller or larger ones, or even a fan with LEDs if you really want to. :D
http://www.coolerguys.com/840556092032.html

When I built my True fridge Incubator I used heat tape down both sides to start and quickly changed to just one strip down the back. I had issues with a heat gradient of about 3 degrees F from top to bottom unless I ran 3 fans. I changed to one strip down the back and used 2 fans. One blowing up the heat tape and one in the front blowing air down. This worked wonderfully I now have a .5f heat gradient in my tubs top to bottom :)
If you have room between the shelves and the side wall I would run one strip down the side if that is where you want to run it but not two. Mini fridges hold heat very well and you may run into a similar issue.
Hope this helps

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot...11611634_n.jpg

Here's a link to my incubator i built. I put the heat tape on the door of mine and had a small personal fan that is powered by 110v outlet that i spliced to a rheostat to control the speed better than the speed switch it already had.

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...uilt-yesterday