Am I losing my eggs?

[cschneider]

So it's day 17 of incubation and I opened the incubator to allow some air to get in and discovered this. It looks like one of the eggs is starting to rot, but it still has veins. The egg originally was a roll out so I have been concerned from the beginning. I can see the embryo's move in all of the other eggs as well, but haven't seen this one move. Is there anything I can do to stop it from further rotting or effecting the other eggs? Any advice is much appreciated as this is my first clutch ever...



The egg in question is the one to the very right.




Thanks everyone...

[achilles_crutch]

imo i think its too wet. if they were mine i'd get some light diffuser material and get them up on it. my very first clutch is on day 18 so i dont claim to know everything.

[cschneider]

imo i think its too wet. if they were mine i'd get some light diffuser material and get them up on it. my very first clutch is on day 18 so i dont claim to know everything.

My hydrometer says it's 70% but there is condensation on the sides of the tub. No condensation is dripping on the eggs though, it's just on the side. Also, my temps are ranging from 88.8 to 89 according to my herpstat.

[wolfy-hound]

Generally you don't want condesation, although you don't want the eggs to dry out either.

Don't worry about the bad egg affecting the good eggs. Sometimes one egg in a clump will go bad but the others tend to be fine, even if the bad egg can't be removed. I've had that happen before.

Dry your substrate up a bit(or add in some dry to that to make the whole dryer). If the egg has gone too far, it might die off, but you can only hope. It might be fine.

[llovelace]

The egg is just too wet, use a drier medium

[cschneider]

Ok so I just removed the eggs from the tub and 4 of them have the same "molding" on them, but not as bad as the roll out. I picked up some of the vermiculite and knew right away it was way too wet. I ended up removing half of the substraint and adding dry, then mixing together to get a good consistency. I also put a piece of light diffuser material directly on top of the vermiculite to allow slight airflow on the bottom of the eggs. I really hope they make it. I'm totally bummed out right now... I knew I should have trusted my instincts and not my hydrometer before I added more water.

Is there anything else at this point that I can do to improve my chances of helping these little guys to full term?

Thanks for the help!

[llovelace]

You can try to remove the mold with a q-tip qently, then when they dry a bit dust them with some antifungal powder, to inhibit the mold growth. Good luck with them

[mojavereptiles]

I would move all of your eggs into a new container where the substrate is not as wet. You may get lucky, and it'll dry. that's definitely water damage. I have a clutch of 8 eggs right now that were all stacked on top of each other, so they are very tall (and attached), and the top two eggs ended up getting wet b/c i had a little too much water in the container, and it was dripping down from the top of the container. Once I got it dried out a little better, and swapped my lid for press N Seal (with a few holes to let out extra moisture), the eggs dried out over the course of a week or so, and now look perfectly normal (although they have a little water line mark on them)

Just swap them all to a new container with a drier substrate... I'd suggest using more perlite in your mixture as well, as it is moist but doesn't get wet as much as vermiculite.

Like this:





If you act quick, you can probably still save the egg

[J.Vandegrift]

If you added light diffuser under the eggs than you want the substrate to be totally saturated with water. As long as the eggs are not directly in contact with the substrate you can not have it too wet. I am thinking since you added a bunch of dry vermiculite and the diffuser you may actually go in the opposite direction and be too dry. I think all of your eggs will be fine, but I would add more water back to the substrate and just let them rest on top of the light diffuser for the remainder of the incubation.