Reptile & Amphibian Forums

After this I will leave u guys alone forever. Ok every1 is saying that I should leave them alone blah blah blah, the only reason I been "doing stuff" with them is because one of the two good eggs is getting like the whole top part of his shell covered in some kind of bug larvae. I know this cant be good so for the past 5 days i have been using a toothbrush to gently brush them off, this has been working quite well, the only problem is they grow back every day. So, should i leave them alone for a week like every1 is saying and just hope that the larvae dont eat my 2 good eggs or should i continue with what im doing?

we just want you to chill out so you don't drive yourself crazy worrying about those eggs. They will either hatch or they won't. There's not much you can do to improve the odds of having the hatch except leave them alone, so you don't LOWER your odds.

Now to this question...when you say bugs, what do you mean? Sometimes you will get a few very tiny little bugs crawling around in the substrate and over the eggs...I have't found them to hurt anything. I'm not sure exactly what they are, but they apparently don't eat snake eggs. Probably something that hatched from eggs that were in the substrate. Snake eggs have bugs crawling all over them in the wild. Unless it's something actually laying eggs on your eggs, I don't think I'd be concerned aboiut it.

After this I will leave u guys alone forever.

Noone is suggesting that you stop posting, just that you don't handle the eggs.

Ok every1 is saying that I should leave them alone blah blah blah, the only reason I been "doing stuff" with them is because one of the two good eggs is getting like the whole top part of his shell covered in some kind of bug larvae.

They could be maggots. If they are, it suggests that the babies/eggs are dead. I have never seen maggots on good eggs.

I know this cant be good so for the past 5 days i have been using a toothbrush to gently brush them off, this has been working quite well, the only problem is they grow back every day. So, should i leave them alone for a week like every1 is saying and just hope that the larvae dont eat my 2 good eggs or should i continue with what im doing?

In this situation, I think I would carefully move the good eggs to a clean container with some clean incubation substrate. Make sure you place them exactly in the same position as they are currently sitting.

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Chris Harrison

...he was beginning to realize he was the creature of a god that appreciated the discomfort of his worshippers - W. Somerset Maugham

I don't know for sure, but I think he's talking about those little tiny sort of fast moving things that will hatch out of the vermiculite once in a while. If he's got maggots, that's a whole different issue...as much as he handles them, I don't see how a fly had time to lay eggs on them, though.

>>I don't know for sure, but I think he's talking about those little tiny sort of fast moving things that will hatch out of the vermiculite once in a while. If he's got maggots, that's a whole different issue...as much as he handles them, I don't see how a fly had time to lay eggs on them, though.
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Chris Harrison

...he was beginning to realize he was the creature of a god that appreciated the discomfort of his worshippers - W. Somerset Maugham

Hey don't get discouraged. This is a great place to ask questions. I think you said you were 15. God, I wish I had gotten into this hobby that young. I'd be a lot more knowledgable now. By the time you are my age you will have a lot more smarts than I have. The way it's looking now, I've got another thirty years before anyone starts calling me "one of the experts." lol
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International Snakes Meetup
International Herpetology Meetup

I have had small bugs that looked like mites get on my eggs before, not for about 5 years though. I would gently brush off as many as I could with a tissue. They would always come back but never seemed to do any harm. The eggs hatched anyways and the bugs didn't get on the snakes.
For all of you out there who haven't seen this they are not maggots and they are not they tiny flies that sometimes get on eggs.
Remember you must be very careful with the eggs. The embryos inside are attatched to the inner wall of the egg and jarring them or not replacing them in the same orientation can kill them.
You can brush off most of the bugs without ever picking up the eggs, if you can't get them all don't worry about it.

I didnt use the same "orientation" becuase i had two differant kinds of bugs, the mite kind, and lots of little white/yellow larvae things on the eggs, i got took them out of their moss and put them in new pertlite or permlite or something, could it really make that much of a differance?

P.S. Its been exactly 8 weeks today.

Cito,

I am not familiar with the substrate you mentioned. I have used vermiculite before with great results. It probably is the same thing.

The bugs may be attracted to the varying levels of humidity in the container that your eggs are in. How much water do you have mixed with the substrate? Too much may lead to bugs arriving, like you described.

Back when I bred, I had a few of those buzzy little fly like bugs a few times, but I just got rid of them by opening the lid and letting them fly out. This only happened about 2 times.

I have also seen those bugs when I would be cleaning cages and found a mess that my snake left me that I didn't see and the moisture from their crap attracted some of those little flying bugs.

A buddy of mine had maggots in his vermiculite that was filled with his snake eggs. Turned out his vermiculite was WAY too wet, so that and the dark closet they were in made a recipe for maggot substrate. LOL!

I kept my vermiculite perhaps drier than others. The amount of water I put in was like this. I mixed it with the vermiculite till I could take a handful and squeeze it into a clump that stuck together. It was a little moist, but not too bad.

Eggs always sink in a little before they hatch. Don't worry bro. I thought the same things you did.

Take care! Hope this helps!

Billy
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Genesis 1:1