Incubators... Ugh

[Crawly's Mom]

Help me! Okay so I am trying to learn as much as possible and plan ahead for the possible clutch I have coming my way. There are a hundred different build your own incubator videos on youtube and everyone seems to have a different way of doing it. Because I have never done this before I have no idea what works and what doesn't. Is water on the bottom good for humidity or is it too much? Do you still wet the verm in the containers if you have water in the incubator? Does anyone have something they have built and used? Because right now I just have a bunch of videos and nobody I trust saying, yes this method works and is reliable. I don't wanna mess up my first clutch. >,<

[Don]

The reason that there are so many ways of doing it is because all you are doing is creating a stable environment. There are many ways of doing that. You want a constant temperature from top to bottom of your incubator. Your eggs can be placed in an egg box either in a medium or on top of a medium. The egg box is used to maintain humidity levels.

I would encourage you to continue to do your research and see what fits with what your future plans are. I have an old freezer with flexwatt and fans. I keep bottles of water in the door and floor to help hold the temps stable when I open and close the door. I use 6 or 12 qt Tupperware containers for egg boxes (depends upon the number of eggs in the clutch). The method that I feel most comfortable with is the substrate-less method. I have a four inch fan blowing at all times to circulate the air and keep the temperature constant. Without a fan, the hotter air rises and you have a temperature variance from top to bottom.

If you are only looking at one clutch, then you might want to look at doing the small cooler build. Flexwatt and a thermostat can be obtained from ReptileBasics.com and the fan you need to circulate the air can be found at coolerguys.com. The build is not very hard and you don't need a lot of skill to put one together. Plenty of folks here can help.

[snake lab]

I have built a number of incubators over the years and now i have a walkin incubator cause i need the space. One way to build an easy incubator is the cooler build. My only issue with coolers is i like to be able to see in the incubator without having to open it too much. The smaller the incubator the quicker the heat escapes when you open it. Now the smaller the incubator the quicker it heats up as well. If you look on craigslist you can find glass front wine chillers, and glass front drink fridges all the time. You can even find em that dont work which is ideal since you dont need them to work. You just want the unit so those tend to be cheap. You can also find them at the dump. Get a unit with a glass door and simple put a strip of 11 inch flexwatt on the sides. You can use smaller flexwatt but i like the bigger stuff cause it heats up faster. Next you need a small fan. You can find a good small d/c electric fan from radio shack for like 20 bucks. The key with the fan is just to be able to move air. You dont want it too big so its cooling constantly. The next thing is shelving. Some of the units will already have shelving that works fine or you can go to home depot and use the wire style shelving. Its cheap and can be cut to size very easily. Once you get that done you need a thermostat. I good proportional stat is what you want. This is the only part of the build you never go cheap on as this is the brains of the operation. A container of water is needed for humidity.

Now incubation medium. There is alot of different mediums you can use and alot of techniques as well. I personally like vermiculite. Ive used it for years, it works, and i dont see any need in changing. You want to ad water to it until it stays clumped together without being able to asqueeze water out of it. Simply place the eggs in the containers. Dont bury the eggs. I poke holes in the lids of the egg boxes. Some people seal them completely with no air holes. Again personally i poke holes. Its how ive done it for years and it works for me. There are alot of ways to incubate eggs and the incubation process is the most importand and hardest part of captive breeding. This is why you need to build or buy a good incubation system and research as much as you can on the subject. Getting snakes to breed is the easy part. Hopes this helps

[Crawly's Mom]

Okay I have plans to get a wine cooler on Wednesday with a glass front, it doesn't work so I am only paying $15, but its a very nice cooler. You mentioned putting water in the heater to increase humidity and also putting water with the vermiculite (which I did look over the how to put together your tubs post), I was curious though about the humidity in general. I saw some posts where people were saying too much humidity is bad, that the eggs can mold. Is that a problem when you put water in the incubator and you have the vermiculite?

[snake lab]

I dont put alot of water in the incubator. For example, my walkin incubator is the size of a walk in closet. I only put a 1 gallon bucket half filled in their just to give some humidity in the air. The egg boxes with wet vermiculate will proveide good humidity to the eggs. Now you want to add moisture to the vermiculate over time if it starts drying out. I spritz my eggs once a week with a water bottle that i keep in the incubator. This is something i have always done, some may say thats not good to do others will agree but it is what i do and it works for me

[Crawly's Mom]

Okay that was going to be another of my questions, how often to spritz or if you need to change out the vermiculite for new moist vermiculite if the other dries out or how you maintain that. I wonder how much water I would put into a wine chiller to keep the air humid without making it too much so that it hurts the eggs. I think I am going to end up running this thing for months before the eggs come to make sure I have all the temps and everything right lol.

[Don]

If you use the substrateless method, you won't have to worry about your vermiculite getting too wet or too dry.

It looks like what you will see in post #13 in this thread:

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...l=1#post839426

[Crawly's Mom]

So the amount of moisture in the vermiculite only matters if the eggs are touching it? I could do the little grates to keep the eggs off the vermiculite, then how wet do you make it?

[Don]

The great thing about using the light diffuser is that you can make the vermiculite very wet. I use Perlite in my containers and use press and seal on the top to lock in the humidity. Once a week, I'll lift a corner to get a little air flow going through, but basically you put the eggs in and as long as you can see a water level in the bottom, you are fine. I've even seen where some people use pebbles in the bottom. It really doesn't matter as long as it is clean (you don't want to develop mold). The stuff in the bottom just keeps the water from sloshing around and touching the eggs.

I used this method this year and had a 100% hatch rate on the eggs I put in the incubator.

[snakesRkewl]

7qt tub ~ I prefer locking lid sterilites
light diffuser panel ~ covering the bottom sitting lightly on the perlite.
perlite ~ 2 inches deep
2 tiny holes place on the long end of the tub towards the top, to allow the tub to breath.
I never have a need to open or air out the eggs during the whole process.

In the incubator the water bottles down below only hold temperatures up or help keep them up, they don't provide any humidity, that's the tub's job.

A proportional thermostat will be your best friend, if you can't afford one using an on/off thermostat will work, but you'll be constantly adjusting it.

You'll also find you don't need a fan in an incubator if you're only using one shelf.