Perlite?

[daniel1983]

I just got my order in from matt (mgreptiles) today: a hovabator, a herpstat, some flexwatt, and some perlite.

Since I always read about vermiculite or vermiculite/perlite mixes and never really read anything about just using perlite as an incubator medium, I was wondering if you prepare it the same way you would prepare vermiculite and if their are any differences. Thanks

[kavmon]

hey daniel, i use perlite for my crested eggs. vermiculite and perlite are very different. what are you incubating? for bp eggs adam showed me his method, and i think it was all vermiculite and a 1 to 5 ratio of vermiculite and water by volume. and mix it until it is clumpy but doesn't drip. i know some people have used all perlite but i'm not sure on the mix. adam can help you out more on this one.


vaughn

[daniel1983]

thanks vaughn....I was planning on using the perlite for bp eggs, but if vermiculite would be best....then I will use what is best I have heard of people using mixes of perlite/vermicuite or all perlite ...but could not find out exactly how they did it. It is really not that big of a deal if i need to pick up some vermiculite also. My wife wants some bearded dragons so I probably wont be able to resist giving breeding them a shot when we get some....do you know if perlite would work fine for bearded eggs? Why do you use perlite instead of vermiculite for the cresteds?

[kavmon]

in the rhac book by repashy,fast and vosjoli it gave perlite as an example and i just went with it. alot of breeders use just vermiculite and use various size containers. i'm going to go with styrofoam boxes with glass lids made for them. the boxes are about the size that a pet store gets fish delivered in or a tad smaller. a bigger box with more medium makes sense to me to keep things stable. some use 5 gal. buckets or trash cans like in the vpi video.

vaughn

[Adam_Wysocki]

I tried perlite 4 or 5 years ago and hated it! ... It just doesn't "feel" right when you mix by touch, but yeah I mixed it the same way and had the same hatch rates as vermiculite. Just remember, dryer is better.

-adam