Incubator Inquery

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reptologist
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Incubator Inquery

Post by reptologist »

Hello I have a question abut the new incubators on the market today. I am a hobbyist and currently work with Suriname Parrot Snakes and North American Wood Turtles. I have been using an incubator that I purchased many years ago. It is made by Lyon TXR reptile incubator. I have had terrible results with it. I always use a 1:1 substrate/water mixture. I have tried several substrates and mold always seems to be an issue. Has anyone used this incubator? How were your results? If I decide to buy a new incubator I would want a out of the box one. I am not interested in building one. Anyone care to recommend one that works for you?
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Scott Waters
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by Scott Waters »

I have used the "Hovabator" for decades. Simply put, a styrofoam box with a small heating element. $40 last time I checked, but I haven't had to buy one in many years. I would suggest using Perlite.....have you tried it? In my experience it keeps mold way down.

Best of luck.

Scott
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reptologist
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by reptologist »

Thanks for the reply, I have used perilite, vermiculate, and hatchrite. I am willing to try it again.
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Kent VanSooy
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by Kent VanSooy »

I've always used vermiculate, you can get a ridiculously big bag at Home Depot for $20. I never measure the amount of water, but just add some to the container, mix it around with my fingers, and add more until it feels right. If you add to much, you can just pick up a glob of the wet vermiculate and squeeze the excess water out. Never had any kind of problems doing it the easy way.
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VICtort
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by VICtort »

Incubators may be delightfully simple in theory, but may be problematic in reality, depending on the species of eggs you have, and your climate and micr-climates. I have hatched many eggs without an incubator, and I know folks who never use incubators with great success. Their room temps ( a defacto incubator) are well suited, they simply put eggs in vermiculite bedding and set them on various shelves in the room.

I have tried the various made in China cabinet type incubators, such as the one linked by craigb or the ReptiPro 5000, or 6000. I live in a hot place, and I need an incubator that can cool as well as heat, which complicates things. I found these incubators to be reasonable cost at $150-200.00, but not dependable enough for my precious Indigo eggs. I have had so-so results. They would be fine for many common colubrid eggs, and perfect if you are hatching king snake or corn snake or many other species. They are not accurate enough at keeping steady temps for more sensitive eggs such as Drymarchon, various Pythons, etc. They are also quite small if you have large or a lot of eggs.
I have two of them, no current use...

I agree with Scott that the inexpensive Hovabator is pretty good for many types of eggs. I formerly used it effectively and hatched dozens of eggs in it. I was nervous about only one wafer thermostat, but it did not fail me in the 4 or 5 seasons I used it.

I now use the relatively expensive but very dependable AVEY incubators and I recommend them. These are built with an ice chest. My model known as the ARTI both heats and cools, keeping eggs at suitable temperature even if the ambient room temp exceeds ideal egg temp, a frequent occurrence in my southwest home.

I have heard great things about one called "Nature's Spirit"or something similar. It is made in Michigan(?), and my buddy who was producing a lot of kink tailed hatchlings says the new incubator completely solved his problem. It is not cheap, so you don't need it for many eggs, but if you have Python or sensitive eggs, it may well be worth it. It does not cool, so don't get it if your room gets hotter than safe temps, you need the cooler type such as the AVEY.

Like Kent, I use vermiculite, medium or coarse grade. Perlite and hatch rite work also, but vermiculite is my favorite. Try not to breath it if dusty, it is hazardous, so keep it slightly damp and dust free.

Parrot Snakes and wood turtles, not sure how sensitive they are to fluctuations in temperature, I would guess they are pretty durable and the RetptiPro and similar series may work fine. Chelonians tend to be temperature dependent sex determinate, thus you might have a hard time incubating the turtle eggs (for female at high temp) and the snake eggs at lower temps in the same unit...something to consider. As far as mold goes, I find healthy and fertile eggs to be quite resistant, but certain eggs may grow mold, often when poorly calcified or compromised someway.

Good luck, Vic
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Kelly Mc
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by Kelly Mc »

Good stuff guys..

Any mention about incubators and its a cool round table for sure. Im a vermeculite person too, since the beginning and I feel oddly loyal to it.

One thing to note is that sometimes the mold isnt what killed the egg (though of course it can) but that once an egg is dead opportunistic organisms quickly begin to break the egg down. The egg is lavish with resources for nations of mycologic and bacterial life - like all dead things.

Others will have input too, but what I will say is wetness can kill, so its good to mix up your verm and water and give the media a chance to mitigate itself and absorb it fully before setting your eggs. Preparation is huge. Its good to have your egg boxes at the ready. I also find too that its good to pay attention to the subtleties of what worked and what didnt, instead of being locked into measurements . There can be variables which sometimes only your fingertips, or a foggy side clued you into in retrospect. The development of an embryo is not static, some guys seem to do better with more airflow toward the end, or what could be the release of stagnant metabolic waste products in a tight space after weeks. Diffusion is slow so exchange is easily underestimated. In large breeder set ups some percentage of bad eggs are seen as a given, but on a smaller, more intimate scale of special guys it doesnt have to be accepted as such.

Also there are some members here who do S.I.M style exclusively they might have useful direction for you
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Kent VanSooy
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by Kent VanSooy »

One thing to note is that sometimes the mold isnt what killed the egg (though of course it can) but that once an egg is dead opportunistic organisms quickly begin to break the egg down. The egg is lavish with resources for nations of mycologic and bacterial life - like all dead things
Glad you stated that Kelly, I find it to be absolutely true. Every now and again I'll get a good egg that has a weird little spot where fungus will grow, but by tending to it throughout the incubation by taking a wet paper towel and gently wiping off the growth is enough. There's no stopping the growth on dead eggs! It's been my experience (but I live in a temperate place) that it's easy to hatch good eggs, but not all eggs are good.
Its good to have your egg boxes at the ready.
Indeed, I should have mentioned that I always prep my egg boxes several days prior, to give the vermiculate/water mix plenty of chance to equilibrate to room temp. If I've already got eggs in the incubator, I'll just let the new box equilibrate in the room, and then the difference will only be a couple degrees when it goes into the incubator.

I've gotten in the habit of incubating my eggs at relatively low temps (77 degrees or so) - the offspring stay in the shell longer, which means less time to try to feed the fussy ones during the wait until the following spring when their appetite is typically better.

Call me weird, but I'm very tactile with my eggs as they incubate - once a week or so I take the container out from the incubator, remove the lid, gently touch them, and smell them. I can spot a dead egg at 1000 yards, LOL. If the moisture seems a touch low, I'll give in vermiculate a spritz or two of water at that time.
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Kent VanSooy
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by Kent VanSooy »

Oh, one more thought: when an egg dies, I always cut it open to find out what went wrong (but obviously you want to be DARN sure that it's dead!). It's very typically one of the two things - it was infertile to begin with (which happens even when there are fertile eggs in the clutch), or it'll contain some half-baked monster that would never had made it (with kinks, etc). Infertile eggs can look pretty good for awhile, but then start growing fungus, collapse, and stink.
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by VICtort »

Regarding Sans Incubation Medium SIMS: this is quite popular with Green Tree Python, Heloderma, Phelsuma, and some other breeders. I tried it with indigos, and it did not work out...not sure if I erred or if it just is not the way to go, I was losing eggs that I think were healthy and fertile... I would do it again with GTP and others, I can not argue with others success.

Healthy eggs are durable and tolerant...compromised eggs are vulnerable to fungus/mold. I have saved a few pretty bad looking eggs with effort, using Desenex, or Zephiran chloride etc. Even spackle or tape... but that is a different topic. I don't blame the incubator, I think the eggs were less than perfect, poorly calcified, etc., and thus vulnerable to mold.

Get good eggs and as Kent mentions, it is easy. I also find myself using dryer substrates than previously, often less than the often quoted 1:1 vermiculite to water by weight formula. I think mold may be stimulated by too damp conditions, as is egg swelling.

On incubators, I have found many to have inaccurate thermometers and thermostats, and you should get a thermometer that takes the temp of the egg chamber or eggs, not just the air space within the incubator. You may be surprised how that can differ. Also some incubators have "dead air" spaces, areas within that differ in temp from the rest of the incubator. This may result in exceeding safe limits of too hot or too cold when incubating at the known extremes, such as one might to favor females in Chelonians for example. I think fans are indicated in large volume incubators. You might want to temp gun your incubators and look for these "dead air" spots, especially if you have produced a mix of healthy and kinked or damaged neonates...

Good luck, I am benefiting by hearing of others tips, solutions, reminders about basics in regard incubators/incubation. I would like to hear someone who advocates SIMS and have them review it...but perhaps that is another topic. I like incubators that keep even temps, don't gain or lose temps quickly when ambient changes, that have fans if large. I also like no incubator if your climate allows for many species, KISS... I have alway envied those with basements and cool areas with even temps for utilizing incubators.

Vic
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reptologist
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by reptologist »

Gentlemen, thanks for taking the time to share your opinions. I am learning more than bargained for. I feel that I may keep the substrate (vermiculite) a bit too wet using the 1:1 ratio after hearing the opinions offered here. I can't wring out water but it does seem overly moist. I am looking up every model of incubator mentioned here. I'm not opposed to spending the money for a nicer unit if that's what it takes. As a hobbyist, obviously if I can get away with a cheaper model it probably makes sense but considering I have kept reptiles for over 40 years, I'm sure it will get used. I would not need the cooling aspect as I live in a temperate zone. Fortunately my turtles breed in Spring and my snakes breed in Winter. I don't thinks the two species would ever be in the incubator at the same time. I would prefer to incubate my wood turtle eggs outside naturally. I did that this year but had terrible results due to a very dry summer here. When I figure out how to upload pictures I would like to share some shots of my animals. My male woodie is really something special. Again, thanks and feel free to keep offering more advice. I do appreciate it. Mike
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gbin
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by gbin »

VICtort wrote:Healthy eggs are durable and tolerant...
This is definitely worth emphasizing. It may be that someone's eggs fail in incubation because s/he did something blatantly wrong (that is, blatantly wrong to others who better know what they're doing - we all start out uneducated, after all ;) ), but I bet far more often the eggs fail simply because there was something wrong with them to begin with. I haven't experience with all that many species, so maybe some are indeed particularly fussy, but those I've dealt with were pretty darn robust. One turtle egg I carried around bare in a shirt pocket for some hours before it was set up in any kind of medium/incubator, and it subsequently hatched out just fine. One snake egg I similarly carried around in a shirt pocket for some hours, this time at least in a little plastic bag with some dirt from where I collected it, before I set it up in a small mesh-topped jar half-filled with (mahogany!$!) sawdust on the floor of what was effectively an outdoor privy, trickling a little water into the jar whenever I visited said privy, and it too subsequently hatched out just fine. I reckon this is why so many people have so much luck with all kinds of jury-rigged incubators, because with good eggs it's actually hard to handle them wrong.

For what it's worth, when I have set snake eggs up "properly" I've done so in a homemade incubator, using vermiculite for the medium.

Gerry
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by Kfen »

To beat a dead horse, you may not have good eggs if you are having that many problems with mold on vermiculate. I have hatched a few species of turtle/tortoise eggs using vermiculate, straight sand, dirt, and mixtures of the above. With vermiculate, which I use exclusively now, I wet it and then squeeze it until it stops dripping.

Make sure there isn't condensation dripping on the eggs in your incubator.

If you have a pen outside for your wood turtles, let them lay outside. They know what they are doing. Give them a sunny spot with a couple of different substrate mixes for different moisture levels to chose from. I have radiotracked wood turtles before, and have seen them nest in different substrates from straight sand, to forest soil.

Also, wood turtles are genetically sex determined. One of the few chelonians around here that are not tsd.
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by chris_mcmartin »

Two items:

1. "Vermiculate" is an adjective ("having wavy lines"); "vermiculite" is the incubation medium (among other uses). Sorry for the nitpick. :thumb:

2.
gbin wrote: trickling a little water into the jar whenever I visited said privy,
Are you sure it was "water?" :P Perhaps you've stumbled upon a magic formula! :lol:
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by Kfen »

chris_mcmartin wrote:
1. "Vermiculate" is an adjective ("having wavy lines"); "vermiculite" is the incubation medium (among other uses). Sorry for the nitpick. :thumb:
I thought it looked a little funny when I was typing it. No need to apologize, thanks.
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by VICtort »

Kfen wrote:To beat a dead horse, you may not have good eggs if you are having that many problems with mold on vermiculate. I have hatched a few species of turtle/tortoise eggs using vermiculate, straight sand, dirt, and mixtures of the above. With vermiculate, which I use exclusively now, I wet it and then squeeze it until it stops dripping.

Make sure there isn't condensation dripping on the eggs in your incubator.

If you have a pen outside for your wood turtles, let them lay outside. They know what they are doing. Give them a sunny spot with a couple of different substrate mixes for different moisture levels to chose from. I have radiotracked wood turtles before, and have seen them nest in different substrates from straight sand, to forest soil.

Also, wood turtles are genetically sex determined. One of the few chelonians around here that are not tsd.
KFEN, interesting point about wood turtles, that is they are genetically sex determined, not temperature dependent. I did not know that. Is that true for other Clemmys species as well? I sure hope Reptologist figures out what is best, gets the suitable incubator or creates a suitable microclimate for them to nest in, the world needs more wood turtles for sure.

Vic
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Kelly Mc
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by Kelly Mc »

The reptile egg is the rugged hallmark of tetrapod transition!

I have had eggs hatch in enclosures, and found a wayward bearded dragon egg in a vacated brooding cage i put the female in to lay, when a couple weeks later i found the time to shovel out the sand, slightly puckered but it hatched fine.

Many years ago I found a single egg in the corner of a shipping bag that had thamnophis. I put it in moist aspen (didnt have any vermiculite) in a deli cup and a standingi hatched out - nothing could have been a more spectacular surprise as that little looker.

Although eggs are built to survive and naturally generate toward fruition I have noticed that not resting on the laurels of incremental diffusion (ie "they dont really need much air, how else will RH be attained") is possible and I ventilate and thus check my eggs more often to add water and make adjustments as things move foward since there is more moisture loss to monitor. I dont mind, but on a large scale I can see why in default to RH stability is practiced when using tup egg boxes in inc. The main reason I include airflow as important as other factors is that the babies hatch with yolk sacs fully assimilated. I have my own reasons why I like that.
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by Berkeley Boone »

VICtort wrote:
Kfen wrote:Also, wood turtles are genetically sex determined. One of the few chelonians around here that are not tsd.
KFEN, interesting point about wood turtles, that is they are genetically sex determined, not temperature dependent. I did not know that. Is that true for other Clemmys species as well? I sure hope Reptologist figures out what is best, gets the suitable incubator or creates a suitable microclimate for them to nest in, the world needs more wood turtles for sure.

Vic
Dang, he beat me to it! I was going to point that out. Vic, no, the other Clemmys are TSD.
--Berkeley
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by gbin »

chris_mcmartin wrote:
gbin wrote: trickling a little water into the jar whenever I visited said privy,
Are you sure it was "water?" :P Perhaps you've stumbled upon a magic formula! :lol:
When I saw the way I'd written that, I knew somebody was going to say such a thing - and I should've known it would be you! :P

What I did was let a little "clean" water trickle off my hands after I'd thoroughly washed and rinsed them. (This wasn't an outhouse, but a sink-, toilet- and shower-equipped bathroom in an old wooden shack with a cement slab floor and substantially incomplete roof and walls; I only meant it was like an outdoor privy in terms of its utter lack of environmental control. I put quotation marks around the word "clean" just now because another fellow in a neighboring shack who relied on the same water tank used to occasionally put live fish in the tank for temporary housing, and tree frogs often bred in it as well. Don't ask me what we used for "clean" drinking water.)

Smartypants! :P

Gerry
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by Kfen »

VICtort wrote:
KFEN, interesting point about wood turtles, that is they are genetically sex determined, not temperature dependent. I did not know that. Is that true for other Clemmys species as well? I sure hope Reptologist figures out what is best, gets the suitable incubator or creates a suitable microclimate for them to nest in, the world needs more wood turtles for sure.

Vic
Berkeley already answered to which I am assuming you meant bogs, spotteds, and western ponds, but to add some more info:
Spotteds are the only remaining member of Clemmys.
Bogs and woods are Glyptemys
Western ponds are Actinemys or Emys., depending on who you want to listen to.
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reptologist
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by reptologist »

Kent VanSooy wrote:I've always used vermiculate, you can get a ridiculously big bag at Home Depot for $20. I never measure the amount of water, but just add some to the container, mix it around with my fingers, and add more until it feels right. If you add to much, you can just pick up a glob of the wet vermiculate and squeeze the excess water out. Never had any kind of problems doing it the easy way.
Kent, I took your advice and checked the consistency of my vermiculite. As I mentioned earlier I have always weighed the mix. I squeezed the substrate and water came dripping out. More than a few drops came out. This has me wondering if my entire problem is pilot error and not the incubator itself. I took some out and added some new vermiculite to the mix until it seemed less clumpy and would not weep out any moisture. 2 of the eggs looks slightly smaller than when they were laid and 4 of them look like they have swollen in size slightly. I would be pissed if all along I have been the problem and not the equipment. I thank you for your advice.
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Kelly Mc
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Re: Incubator Inquery

Post by Kelly Mc »

Perhaps you have found the culprit, we are used to measuring, it denotes precision in many work but with moisture and air having its own behaviors when warmth is applied, the dimension of that inner sanctum of the media intimate to the egg is subject to variables.

Squeezing the verm is a good test, but reducing the water content by adding more verm like you have done works better than squeezing it all out to get it less wet. Its a small detail perhaps, but compressing it all I find kind of ages it before its time. Adding dry and tilling it in preserves its character, plus by actually working with it over trickle and till it gets more predictable. Perhaps you did have it too wet those times still your instincts are excellent.

I'm with Kent, I like to know what's going on. If ever there is a box people buy, put eggs in, and touch a panel and it all takes place automatically it would be to the loss of a fascinating time.
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