Moldy rotten egg.

[rufretic]

For the sake of discussion & for what it's worth:
I haven't read Deb's write-up on incubating snake eggs, & don't doubt it's excellence for a moment, but I have successfully incubated many clutches of snake
eggs (none were BPs, if that matters?) and I never once used a light deflector. My eggs always sat right in the damp vermiculite & I didn't have any problem
with eggs "rotting". I hope this forum doesn't try to emulate the Facebook groups I've heard so much about, where there's only one right way or the highway?

I 100% agree with you, there is not just one way to do things. It wasn't a matter of right or wrong, my point was just that he is a regular here and I believe this is his first year breeding so I was surprised he didn't use the helpful write up here. Obviously eggs can be incubated perfectly in the correct substrate mix, it's much closer to nature's way but you must get the mix correct or it can ruin the eggs. For a beginner it's much safer to just use a light deflector because it has no chance of hurting anything but will save your butt if you mess up the mix. Imo 1 to 1 could be too wet and could very well be an issue. If you use the light deflector, you could even do straight water and as long as you have them propped up out of it, there is no chance of your eggs being too wet, I'm sure we can all agree there is no such thing as too humid for incubating BP eggs. It's just a matter of keeping them out of direct contact with the water. The light deflector eliminates the chance of this being an issue so I believe it is a great precaution to use. That certainly doesn't mean it has to be done that way, I know many eggs have been incubated successfully without one but I don't know of any reason not to use one so for a beginner especially, it seems like a good idea to use one as a safe guard.