Humidity in egg tubs: how much is okay?

Just wondering how much humidity should be visible in the incubating egg-tubs.

this time i measured the vermiculite and water 1:1. 65g verm, 65g water. mixed it up and put in the eggs. i have 5 holes on 2 sides of the egg containers, and 4 holes on each lid. however when i looked in this morning there are still quite large beads of water hanging off the lid and dripping down the sides of the containers.

i guess i'm going to have to take out half the mixture and add more vermiculite.

what ratio do you guys usually use, and how much humidity is too much?

No need for air holes. When condensation happens its due to air coming into the tub being colder than the air inside.

If not using the light diffuser then you need 1:1 ratio.

Using Light diffuser you can have it as wet as you want. I never had condensation show up till week till they hatch. If your getting it already with no eggs then its how its setup.

do you recommend using light diffuser on top of the vermiculite? i used light diffuser on top of wet perlite this year (couldn't find verm ANYWHERE) which seemed to work okay, but we lost an entire clutch of corn eggs so i decided to switch back to just burying them halfway in vermiculite. not sure it was the incubation that killed the corn eggs, as they looked like crap from the beginning, but i thought better safe than sorry.

the incubation setup we have now is a hovabator (not plugged in) and a strip of flexwatt hooked up to a Herpstat, set at 89 degrees. there is light diffuser on top of the flexwatt, between the egg tubs. i didn't want to rest the tubs directly on the flexwatt; i figured with the diffuser between there might be a bit of forgiveness if the temps do swing a bit.

so i measured the verm/water at a 1:1 ratio and i'm still getting A LOT of humidity, I just peeked in and since i took the lids off there is fog on the windows of the hovabator. i wonder why i'm getting so much humidity?

what do you suggest I do, i REALLLLLLLY want this clutch to do well!

*edit*

just a thought, maybe it's more humid where i live (coastal BC) so the 1:1 ratio is simply too much water?

Could be the hovabator isnt air tight and allowing too much cool air into it.


I have always use the diffuser and i use vermiculite/perlite mix. I soak it till theres puddles of water. This way i never have to add water at all. No checking on eggs but once e very 2 weeks.

hmm that could be it, the hovabator was given to us by somebody who used to breed bearded dragons.

what i've done is cover up the air holes i made, took out about half the vermiculite, and added dry vermiculite without adding any more water. it does still clump together loosely, so i'm thinking maybe the vermiculite i have is a little bit wetter than usual. i also closed the window in the room we are incubating in.

if it continues to be a problem i may have to move them to a different container.

we do have a small cooler we could use, but the problem with that is we only have enough flexwatt to cover the bottom of it, and the cooler is not big enough for all 5 eggs to go in one container. we would have to stack 2 glad containers vertically with the flexwatt on the bottom. would that pose any problems? would the bottom container get too warm, or would enough heat rise to the to container to even it out?

yikes, i checked the egg tubs just now and the humidity build-up is still quite a lot.

like i said i removed half of the vermiculite & water mixture that i prepared, and replaced it with new, dry vermiculite. so i guess it's not the medium that is the problem; it must be that the hovabator is letting cooler air in.

do you think my cooler idea would work okay? or would there be too much of a temperature variance in the 2 tubs if i stack them (with flexwatt below the bottom layer?)

You can go to a walmart and get a nice Igloo Cooler and youll be set. Transfer the heat tape over, thermostat and add some water bottles to stabilize temps.

Check out the pictures to give you idea.

http://www.reptileinsider.com/showthread.php?p=101622

How do the eggs look? Are they still nice and white and plump? If so, your humidity may be fine. It's actually recommended that your humidity be around 95%. Just make sure the water is not dripping down onto the eggs; if that becomes a problem, try burying them more with your medium (just don't pack it in tightly around the eggs), as this can help protect them from dripping water.

The water/medium ratio should be 1:1 by weight, not by volume. For the most part, it should clump together when squeezed, but break apart easily. No water should come out when it is squeezed.

thanks guys! i am going to see about getting a bigger cooler tomorrow. do you think a Zoo Med UTH would suffice as a heat source? we don't really have a big enough piece of flexwatt if we're going to be heating a big cooler, and since we can't really get it easily in Canada i don't think we'll be able to get any more for awhile.

for now i've just wiped away the lids and sides of the tubs, going to check on them again in the morning.

the eggs were only laid on Saturday, so they still look okay. white and plump, as they should be :)

and yes, i did measure it by weight; 65 grams of vermiculite and 65 grams of water. i think it was too much water, though, as i guess the coast is more humid.

thanks again for all your help, i will post photos and let you know how they are doing!

I have a small cooler incubator, with water bottles. I use a light diffuser and soak the vermiculite.

I get a LOT of condensation. In the tubs, even in the roof of the cooler. I cannot get rid of it.

What I did was tilted the incubator by about 1/2". Therefore all the water droplets that are too heavy will fall to one side of the container and rarely touch the eggs. It's only been a couple weeks but my eggs are plump and aren't getting wet at all. May be something to consider.

I have heard the tilt method works well.

Honestly, I would just throw light diffuser in the tub and not worry about your substrate as Rich was suggesting, you don't need it to be perfect then. And if you tilt the tubs, the droplets will avoid the eggs. And nothing will matter anymore, except your big white eggs!

When tilting the tubs/incubator you will run into the risk of your eggs moving and rolling. Which will kill them if its been longer than 24 hours after they were laid.



I put 3" of vermiculite/perlite in 6qt tub. Fill it with water till its soaked. Use 2 pieces of light diffuser so it dont sink and get eggs wet. Put lid on and thats it. If still getting condensation then its a incubator problem having cool/hot spots.

Also when a egg gets wet it can sometimes cool it down and cause it to sweat which is bad.

i am in the process of building the biggie cooler incubator, i'd rather not have the headache of checking the tubs every day.

just heading to the store to get some sealed water bottles. we have some frozen ones we use as ice packs when camping, but i don't want to run the risk of springing a leak and mixing electricity & water...

i'll post pics later.

well i had to buy chilled water bottles, as that's all they had. so they're in the sink with warm water right now to heat them up to room temp.

a question i thought of earlier:

when i found that the female had laid her eggs, she was only curled around 4 of them. one was outside of her little "nest." they all candled okay, but does this mean she knows it's going to go bad? unfortunately i didn't think to mark the one that rolled out.

obviously i am incubating all of them regardless, but i'm just curious if anybody has ever noticed that roll-outs go bad.

When my female laid 9 eggs, she kicked one out as well but it looked just as healthy as the rest. It candled fine and the baby is just as the others. I can only think that maybe she thought this would be a problem child and she was picking favorites

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SquamishSerpents

well i had to buy chilled water bottles, as that's all they had. so they're in the sink with warm water right now to heat them up to room temp.

a question i thought of earlier:

when i found that the female had laid her eggs, she was only curled around 4 of them. one was outside of her little "nest." they all candled okay, but does this mean she knows it's going to go bad? unfortunately i didn't think to mark the one that rolled out.

obviously i am incubating all of them regardless, but i'm just curious if anybody has ever noticed that roll-outs go bad.

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LOL! too funny

UGH after all the fussing and building a new incubator, i'm STILL getting way too much condensation on the lid! the eggs are still in vermiculite, but it's not the verm that's the problem. it's the condensation on the lid. i have no idea what i'm doing wrong.

the cooler is as airtight as can be with the wires sticking out. i've got a heat mat, water bottles, and i even did the vermiculite with less water this time.

250g vermiculite to 200g of water. what gives? i'm getting frustrated!

Are you Just putting the lid on the tub, nothing else. Ive never had this problem.

If need be, you can put paper towel over the tub top and then put lid on over that. Change it every so often

yep, just the lid. i'm in the process of uploading some photos

http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/a...t242011004.jpg

http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/a...t242011011.jpg

http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/a...t242011005.jpg

http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/a...t242011008.jpg

http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/a...t242011010.jpg

the eggs have snowflakes on them...hope they still hatch out!

i just want to know WTF i am doing wrong to be getting so much condensation. those are the eggs right when i put them in. i'll get some new photos of what the lid looks like today.

Are you putting the T-stat probe inside the egg tub?

I never put it inside as the outside air will warm the inside of tubs as well. That could be why its cooling down and heating back up causing the condensation.

and about 30 hours later. i just don't get it.

http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/a...t252011001.jpg

http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/a...t252011002.jpg

http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/a...t252011003.jpg

hmmm yes the probe is inside the tub, as i thought it was the egg-tub that needed to be heated to 90ish?

it's on a proportional thermostat (Herpstat) so it shouldn't really be fluctuating too much.

the high/low reads 88.3 - 89.2

I truly believe its due ot having the thermostat probe inside the tub.

Its tough messing with eggs when their already in the incubator. Id say take the thermostat probe OUT and set it on the shelf in incubator next to the tub. Set thermostat to 88.5. Wipe the condensation out and see.


I have a full size upright freezer that holds 28 6qt tubs. I have the probe outside hanging in the middle of the bottom shelf. Herpstat is set at 88.1 and inside the tubs i get 87.5 and top is 88.3.

Also a small computer fan about 80-90mm in size to circulate the air might help a ton as well

you will notice at bottom my herpstat probe is hanging in middle
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y14...r/100_2844.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y14...r/100_2846.jpg

and yeah, i do hate messing with them. they've already dealt with their tubs being wiped out a few times, and also a move from the stupid hovabator to the cooler.

how do you measure your temps, do you have multiple thermometers in the incubator? i just have the thermometer probe and tstat probe tied together. should i put the thermometer probe inside the egg tub, or just leave it with the tstat?

sorry for all the questions, and thanks so much for all of your help!

I dont measure my egg tubs. I keep a probe at the top and bottom along with herpstat probe. When i check eggs every 2 weeks ill zap them with temp gun and always 87.0-88.3 in the egg tubs.

Your best off putting the t-stat probe and thermometer one as well outside the tub next to it. Wipe off the condensation, and check back in morning/after noon. Should fix the problem.

alright thanks, i'll let you know how it goes in the morning!

grrrrrrr the gosh-darn humidity was back this morning!! not as bad, mind you, but i also didn't leave it 24 hours like last time.

i wiped again, and placed paper towels under the lid.

maybe it's just because it goes from like 28 during the day down to 9 or 10 degrees at night. who knows.

we're looking for an old broken wine-cooler for next year, but this will have to suffice right now.

Whats the Room temps the incubator is in. That will play a roll as well when you keep opening and closing lid.

Best kept it in warmest room

75.6 - 82.9, but i don't think the max/min have been reset in awhile, i don't see how it could have gotten down to 75 recently, it's been pretty hot out

That drop in temps could be either bad battery on thermometer or the cause of some of your humidity issues.

But you did say its not as bad now, so a fan added in with a low 20-40CFM rating could help move air around and stop build ups

I may be wrong but I remember a science class about dew points and altitude. The higher the altitude the higher the air pressure and this means that your dew point is much lower that mine here in florida for example. Its all a bit over my head but just a suggestion. See if this makes sense to you. At a given temperature but independent of barometric pressure, the dew point is a consequence of the absolute humidity, the mass of water per unit volume of air. If the temperature rises without changing the absolute humidity, the dew point will rise and the relative humidity will lower accordingly. Reducing the absolute humidity will bring the dew point back down to its initial value. In the same way, increasing the absolute humidity after a temperature drop brings the dew point back down to its initial level. For this reason, the same relative humidity on a day when it's 80°F, and on a day when it's 100°F will imply that a higher fraction of the air on the hotter day consists of water vapor than on the cooler day, i.e., the dew point is higher.

At a given barometric pressure but independent of temperature, the dew point indicates the mole fraction of water vapor in the air, or, put differently, determines the specific humidity of the air. If the pressure rises without changing this mole fraction, the dew point will rise accordingly; Reducing the mole fraction, i.e., making the air less humid, would bring the dew point back down to its initial value. In the same way, increasing the mole fraction after a pressure drop brings the relative humidity back up to its initial level. Considering New York (33 ft elevation) and Denver (5,130 ft elevation), for example, this means that if the dew point and temperature in both cities are the same, then the mass of water vapor per cubic meter of air will be the same, but the mole fraction of water vapor in the air will be greater in Denver.

Condensation happens when the temps inside the eggbox are different than the temps outside the eggbox. Just like you car in the morning because temps have dropped outside faster than inside the car. I usually run my incubator for many days with tubs inside before I ever get eggs so all the temps are balanced out and never have condensation problems.

yeah we had a bit of a hard time with the incubator. our whole building envelope for our apartment was under construction, which involved drywall sanding, painting, moving furniture (a MILLION freakin' times!), etc.

we had to seal off the snake area and cover everything up to prevent drywall dust from harming them. i also moved all of the reptile related stuff into the spare bathroom and sealed it off, so the bator didn't get a chance to run and stabilize. i knew these eggs were going to be laid, but it's been a complete madhouse around here.

the WEIRD part about this season is that our first BP clutch was laid 85 days after ovulation (2 good looking eggs, one questionable egg; it was a half-boob egg, and 2 slugs. one molded and died early on, i threw it out without opening it, and 2 DIE's), and this current clutch was laid 76 days after ovulation. 5 good eggs. WHAT GIVES!?

we're on the hunt for an old broken down wine fridge w/ glass door since next year should be a big breeding season for us. hopefully that will solve some of our condensation woes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by West Coast Jungle

Condensation happens when the temps inside the eggbox are different than the temps outside the eggbox. Just like you car in the morning because temps have dropped outside faster than inside the car. I usually run my incubator for many days with tubs inside before I ever get eggs so all the temps are balanced out and never have condensation problems.

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what i don't understand is WHY are the temps so different between the inside of the egg box and the rest of the cooler? it's sealed off pretty tight, and it's been 8 or so days that they've been in there already.