Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am makeing an incubator out of a non working Wine Cooler. Basicaly a Mini Frige with a viewable door so I dont have to cut out a viewing window. Anyways. Just wanted to make sure I have some things down properly. You put the thermostat probe to measure the air temp somewhere around the middle not above the heat sourse or inside egg cups? Humidity guage probe goes in one of the little egg tubs/cups in with the incubation medium?
Then a couple thermometers with probes to measure the air temp say at the bottom and one at the top not in with the eggs? Just trying to see if I should put the probes somewhere else? This is for leopard geckos. I got the wine cooler for free and figure it wouldnt cost much to make an incubator out of this.

I have my t-stat probe and thermocouple probe in the egg box itself, but not touching the eggs. This was not my preferred placment. I initially had the t-stat probe hanging from the wire shelf the egg box sat on, above the heat source, but had two layers of water bottles in between so it was not directly over the heat. Long story short, I ran into to some problems early on and ended up using the probe in the egg box to control the heat soure. That probe was always there but only to display temps (I was using a Herpstat II). I am now on my 6th week of a 7 week incubation and it is working great.

I guess my point is you can put the probe in the egg box but I would only do that if you only had one egg box. If you are placing multiple egg boxes in the fridge, place it around the middle, or top if using a fan to circulate the air inside.

The temp probe should be in the egg box. If you have more than one, go ahead and place one outside the egg box but I would keep it near the t-stat probe. I do not use humidity devices in mine. IMO, anything under a couple hundred dollars is not going to be accurate anyway.

Bart