Reptile & Amphibian Forums

my incubator isnt staying at a steady temp the its going from about 88 to 92 degrees the humidity is perfect thought i tried lowering the temps but it still goes up and down beetween these temps can this harm the eggs?

Those temps are fine. My incubators run between those temps all the time and my BP eggs hatch at 50 days.

While not perfect, this temp range should not harm the eggs. What type of controller are you using? Are the eggs in an egg chamber? This helps (among other things) keeping fluctuations to a min. What are you using to measure the temps? Is this accurate? What type of incubator?
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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

Below is a long thread with a pic of his set up. No egg chamber.

>>Below is a long thread with a pic of his set up. No egg chamber.

Thanks! When they get long and drawn out like that, I tend to skip the thread.
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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

the incubator i am using is a hova bator. it looks preety cheap i had to get it yesterday due to the suprise of me rescue female ball layed them the thermostat isnt electronic it just has a knob that you turn one way to increase temp and the other way to decrees. i wasnt prepaird for this so this is the best i couldve done for the eggs. to check the temp i do have a thermometer in the incubator. and can you inform me on how to make or where i can place these eggs in an egg chamber i dont know exactly what you mean by that so any help will be much appreciated thanks

I see part of the problem. You need an egg chamber. With the setup you currently have, try to find a clear bowl that you can flip upside down over the eggs. Also, I have some detailed info at my web site.

Articles

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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

but the bowl in the incubator? here is a pick of the full set up with the top on and everything let me know if i should still put the bowl inside
Link

JMartin has a nice article about incubating and hwo to set up. Your hovabator will probably hold a small container in it (mine does), just make sure it doesn't come close to the heating elements.

I use a proportional thermostat with my hovabator (if I'm not mistaken, barometric pressure affects the wafer in the hovabator, causing the temps to wander a bit). Something like a Big Apple Herp Proportial themostat, a Spyder Robotics Herpstat, or Helix will work well. The BAH themostat keeps the temps within a 1/2 or 3/4-degree range. The Spyder keeps them about dead steady and is easier to adjust. Do you need that type accuracy? Probably not.

I also completely removed the wafer switch control from my hovabator (physically removed the switch, mount & all and rewired the incubator without it) and just use the BAH or Spyder with it. One less point of failure.

Do you lose power where you live? We lose it more often than I'd care for where I live, so I took someone elses advice here (sorry, can't remember who) and picked up one of the computer UPS power backups (a good high-capacity one) that'll run the incubator for several hours if power goes out. It kept my eggs comfy on at least one occasion. And.. last but not least.. a backup thermostat like a Johnson Controls or RANCO that the 'main' themostat is plugged into is a good idea. That way if the main fails in ON mode, the backup will regulate the temperature util you can deal with it. Hopefully you'll never have a runaway thermostat, but I did. Luckily I was home to stop it from killing the eggs (the incubator was at 107 degrees and still climbing, but luckily the egg chamber only got up to 94 degrees briefly). The Johnson Controls thermostat is my insurance against another runaway thermostat.
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

thanks for all the help im going to put the eggs in a egg chamber today and see what i can do about geting a better thermostat

was my problem with when i was using those still is that if opened to much/often has a huge affect on temps also the room temperature if it isnt somewhat steady it changes temps i had a few problem with mine didnt like it after first year so i repped it to peices tossed the t-stat and kept the heating element for my new and improved incubator lol