Posted by:
alecfeldman
at Fri Sep 2 14:39:30 2005 [ Report Abuse ] [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by alecfeldman ]
Since many people are interested in this, I thought I would post the not so happy followup.
To recoup the entire story:
My female Lepida laid 15 eggs. They were all fertile. I incubated them at 82F in vermiculite. They were all developing very well until the second month, then in 1 week 7 eggs went bad for no apparent reason. The other 8 eggs were developing well for the full incubation period of (what I had read to be) 60-75 days. At 80 days, I started getting concerned that none of the eggs were hatching. I noticed some of the eggs were sweating and collapsing. I decided to pop the eggs. The first 3 were dead in the egg (fully developed). The next 5 I hatched out were all alive and fully developed. 2 died in the next couple of days. 1 was still alive but very weak. 2 were really strong. To make matters worse, since all the babies were really dehydrated, I put a very shallow water dish in the cage (about 1.4" of water). The next day, one of the strong babies drowned in it. Don't know how, since the water was half as high as the body of the animal. Anyways, at this point I have 1 weak one, 1 strong one. Just posting this, so others can learn from my experience.
I included some pics of the female laying in here egg tank.
Thanks for reading.
Alec Feldman
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