Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Clutch was laid 5/4. All stuck together, but I marked the tops anyway b4 I put them on a grid (substrate-less method) in a shoebox sized container with lid & no air holes.

Candled & looked great all the way till about last week when I thought movement seemed a bit less when candled.

I was determined not to cut. Today I checked the eggs & there was tiny bit of neon green on the eggs. I saw no movement, freaked out, & cut all of them only to find 10 perfectly formed dead babies. A few had even absorbed 85-90% of the yolk.

Using Nature's Spirit incubator with Spider Robotics t-stat. Eggs shoot at 88-89 & I have a tub of h20 in there so humidity is close to 100%.

Needless to say I am quite frustrated & want to prevent this from happening again.

It was a normal female bred to a couple visuals, spider, pastel...nothing fancy.

Thoughts, flames, lectures, ideas...all welcome. I am clueless.

Everything else in the bator appears to be chuggin along fine. Of course I'm paranoid from here out. DOH!
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www.heatsherps.com

If you thought you were at 89 you must have been higher. They had to have cooked, if not some would have lived. You need a couple digital thermometers in there. I have seen as much as a 5 degree variant in some incubators on the market from top to bottom while the temp is set at one temp. You must have ended up in the 90s.

When I check each egg container I shoot the individual eggs with the PE1 temp gun from Pro Exotics.

I also have circular temp gauges inside the tubs which have never read higher than 89. The main spider robotics t-stat reads 91.0 & it records the high & low.
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www.heatsherps.com

I'm sick for you! Got to be the worst to lose a whole clutch at the end like that. I have no clue if what you said is accurate. Any possible temp spikes you might not be accounting for?? Hopefully, someone with more experience than I will have some insight. I use substrateless and have NEVER had any problems with eggs going bad.

If yours candled good after laying, it had to be something at the end of incubation or they would have gone bad earlier/not developed as much as they did. No way 10 didn't have an egg tooth or had some physical problem -- not all 10. Hope you get some help figuring it out. So sorry.
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Bill Buchman

Just another thought, I like the incubator you are using, I have one here also. BUT it needs more fan power. The one little fan is not enough. I would suggest adding 1 or 2 more.

You said no air holes, did you open the lid enough to allow air?

Dave

At least once, usually twice a week.
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www.heatsherps.com

How often were you opening the box toward the end? 10 eggs in a shoebox sized tub, I would be opening the box every 3 or 4 days after 5 or 6 weeks, then every couple of days the last week or so. By that point you have living breathing critters that do consume fair amount of O2.

Having said that, my hypothesis for full term dead-in-eggs has long been related to the extra heat generated during the last couple of weeks of development. That many eggs, in that small a space could heat well into the mid 90s if the incubator was running at 89-90. Thats the main reason I advocated place the temp probe in the egg box to the other guy...

My two biggest clutches out on a breeding loan (13 and 14 eggs) each had relatively high losses. In one case some of the eggs might not have been fertile to start with and in the other we had some missing eyes. Could be any number of reasons nothing to do with incubation but I'm wondering if these bigger clutches take a little different management for heat or oxygen or something like that.

With my current smaller clutches (8 is the biggest) at home I have the thermometer probe in the center of the egg mass and I've always used boxes with small air holes (I think the big clutches where sealed but not at my place). Anyway, I don't have the thermostat probe in with the eggs and I've found I have to keep turning the thermostat down as apparently even this ventilated 8 egg clutch is generating increasing heat as they go along. Maybe there is something to be said for maternal incubation. Or at least really big incubation boxes like the VPI trash cans (do they still use that?) in the walk in incubator.

>>How often were you opening the box toward the end? 10 eggs in a shoebox sized tub, I would be opening the box every 3 or 4 days after 5 or 6 weeks, then every couple of days the last week or so. By that point you have living breathing critters that do consume fair amount of O2.
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>>Having said that, my hypothesis for full term dead-in-eggs has long been related to the extra heat generated during the last couple of weeks of development. That many eggs, in that small a space could heat well into the mid 90s if the incubator was running at 89-90. Thats the main reason I advocated place the temp probe in the egg box to the other guy...

ahh..you beat us to it
That's what i was thinking as soon as i read it was ten eggs.That's alot of mass heating up inside a little eggbox(,which is already surrounded by the 89F incubator.).It had to of spiked up fairly high.

Sorry you lost them..
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Charles Glaspie
http://s25.photobucket.com/albums/c95/Coldthumb

I use the NS incubators...I go with 2 air holes (I think Casey actually recommends that) and I usually uncover a third during the last couple weeks depending on whether I see lots of condensation starting to build on the lid.
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Dale....dgoins222@yahoo.com
www.LibertyReptiles.com

I used HatchRite and so far have had 100% hatch rate. This is my first year with eggs, so I'm no expert, and thats why I used HatchRite. Sorry for your loss, and hopefully your next clutch will be perfect.