Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Today six of my waterdragon eggs hatched! I couldin't believe it really happened. I started out with 33 eggs from my two girls but only 7 have survived. Is it normal for so few to last? Six of them hatched today and the other one it really close. Sadly one of the babies drown in the water in the incubator but the others are doing great. Right now I have them in a 10 gallon tank with wood chips and moss on the bottom, a large shallow water bowl, uvb light, and a heat light. Is this good for newborns? I ahve never had them before. Also what should I feed them? Tonight I out some baby mealworms (about 1/4 an inch long) in a little dish for them.

I'd feed them small cricekts and such. Hey you need to post pictures ASAP! Its a MUST! I really want to breed my male, but, I have to wait for my finances to get to a point that i can afford everything needed.
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www.mplionhearts.com

I'd like to post pictures but I don't have a digital camera. Hopefully I'll get one soon, but I'm saving up money to make a new enclousure first. They seemed to completely ignore the mealworms I put in yesterday. Today I put in some baby crickets and they chased them around trying to catch them. Its very funny to watch because they still aren't that coordinated and have a little trouble aiming at the crickets.

Thats great. Congrats. I think what you have sounds pretty good, but I have never hatched eggs before. My female is gravid though so hopefully I will soon. I have a couple of questions. How long did it take for the eggs to hatch? How do you know if they "go bad" like you mentioned in your post. What was the set up you used? It sounds like it worked pretty well. I am sure they lay alot of eggs because alot of things can happen to a clutch in the wild. If they can get 2-3 out of a clutch its good. Congrats again and good luck!

When the eggs went bad they started to cave in and no longer were round and smooth. Afew of them started to grow mold on them and turn brown. The good eggs stay bright white, smooth, and actually grow in size. It took about 1 month and 3 weeks for them to hatch. I kept them in a homeade incubator. You can find instuctions for it at http://www.icomm.ca/dragon/breeding.htm#Incubation
The only thing I did different was to use a 10 gallon tank. I found that to keep the temperature right I had to cover the tank in a blanket leaving a little open space on the top for fresh air. Also spay the eggs with water every few days.

33? How many different clutches? Mine usually only have 7-8 per clutch. I have heard people recommend spraying the eggs before, but in my experience doing so is not good. Humidity is good, moisture is bad. The reason many give for spraying is to keep the exposed part of the egg from becoming dryer then the buried part because that makes the egg harder to break free from. The best way to do that is to make sure that the eggs are buried at least 75%. I stopped spraying my eggs and followed that rule and 17 of the last 18 eggs laid have hatched.

The 33 eggs from what I guess you could call 3 1/2 clutches. One of my girls had a clutch of 11 and then exactly one month later had a clutch of 10. My other girl had a clutch of 10 and a few weeks later had 3. The interesting thing about the eggs is that the 7 eggs that hatched all came from the clutch of 11 while all of the other ones did not last. I never sprayed them a lot, just enough to keep the dirt around them slightly moist.