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Re: SnakeBytesTV- Incubators
Well, the snake in the vid was an albino, lol.
I was not as impressed with the Reptibator as Brian seems to be. An incubator that small, I want to use substrateless incubation, and you can't do that, because you can't get the humidity high enough inside the thing.
A Hovabator controlled by a HerpStat is actually the same price, and holds humidity better. I was able to fit 5 clutches of ball eggs in mine.
So, figure, for 100 clutches, that's 20 Hovabators, and a cost of about $2600. The downside:
It's a lot of plugs!
The upside:
If a thermostat fails or something goes badly wrong with one of the incubators, you lose 5 clutches...not 100.
I'm not sold on the walk-in incubator idea for that reason. It's a lot riding on a single setup, and a failure would be catastrophic.
I tried a walk-in incubator last year. It was a constant struggle with the temperatures as the outdoor temps rose and fell. I wound up losing eggs to temperature problems and humidity issues.
This year, I have managed to fit every clutch I produced into 2 Hovabators (the girls conveniently waited to lay until a previous clutch had hatched, lol). One set up with vermiculite, one with substrateless--I put the eggs directly in the incubators, not in egg boxes. Herpstat thermostats control them. I removed the wafer thermostats completely. My losses? 2 eggs went bad early in incubation. That's all, out of 14 clutches. Those 2 may have simply been infertile.
Stable temperatures, perfect hatchlings.
I may never bother with another incubator. Why mess with what works so well? If one of the HovaBators wears out or breaks, they are only 35 bucks to replace. I'll bet I can even stack them. (I want to test that first, to make sure that the bottom box doesn't excessively heat the underside of the one on top of it).
I don't have to build anything, just cut out a fluorescent light grid, put the included plastic insert in, and plug it in. It's considerably cheaper than paying 1500 bucks for a cabinet that holds only 12 clutches.
On the other hand, I see the RCAB200 Reptile Cabinet Incubator from Avey is only 800 bucks, (plus 300 in egg boxes) and they claim it holds 200 ball eggs. So that might be the next step up.
Just some thoughts.
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