any success with homemade incubator?

[PghBall]

I have a cooler set up as well. First clutch had 100% hatch rate. I used a Heat Cable and wrapped it around the bottom layer of PVC. I put egg crate (cut out the middle to zip tie a fan to it and placed my water bottles around the fan. My temps were 89-90 at all times.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

You will probably find out that most people here have a homemade incubator.

It's really not hard to setup and can be done for a fraction of the cost of commercial incubators and easily twice as many clutches if not more.

Here is mine capable of holding (30) 7 quarts tubs or (10) 15 quarts + (10) 7 quarts tubs



My cost: Black paint for the fridge, Proportional T-Stat (Herpstat) , Heat Tape , Egg boxes and light diffuse for the egg boxes, the fridge was free.

My very first incubator was a 120 quarts cooler.

[loonunit]

I use a cooler from Safeway with heat tap wrapped around a dozen 0.5 liter bottles of water, controlled by a Vivarium Electronics thermostat. It held a rock-solid 89F for 61 days, and I now have a lavender albino male and 4 poss hets.

The trick is to spend the $150 on a good thermostat, use a well-insulated cooler, and make sure you have lots of water bottles.

(The water bottles increase the heat capacity, see. They're basically "heat inertia": it takes water a long time to cool down and a long time to heat up, so once they hit the correct temperature, the thermostat doesn't have to work very hard to maintain it, and any heat spikes from the electronics will be absorbed by the water.)

I did basically follow the DIY instructions on one of the stickies I found here. I didn't add a viewing window, however, because I figured that would be complicated, and would hurt the cooler's insulating ability.

[BallsUnlimited]

You will probably find out that most people here have a homemade incubator.

It's really not hard to setup and can be done for a fraction of the cost of commercial incubators and easily twice as many clutches if not more.

Here is mine capable of holding (30) 7 quarts tubs or (10) 15 quarts + (10) 7 quarts tubs



My cost: Black paint for the fridge, Proportional T-Stat (Herpstat) , Heat Tape , Egg boxes and light diffuse for the egg boxes, the fridge was free.

My very first incubator was a 120 quarts cooler.

next year I will be moving up to one just like yours Deborah since ill finally have all of my females up to weight which will be 22 females. which is going to put me over the limit for my 150 qt cooler