Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What the heck is with the cost of purpose built incubators? Looking around getting one the size of a small mini fridge you're looking at at least 300 dollars (frequently more like 400 ). I can buy a NEW mini fridge and cut the compressor and add heat tape for a lot less than that--and given that I can get cheap used ones for 50 bucks on occasion, blaah.

Now I've never done this, but I plan to this weekend--I actually picked up a free junker mini fridge, and I got a fresh blade for my hacksaw so I can gut it and cut off coils, etc. And my drill will go through the sides of a fridge if I use a decent bit. But hell, you could do this with a halfway decent ice chest--and I may someday.

I just don't get what makes most of those purpose built ones worth what peopel charge for them!
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We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion people if you had to be beautiful to get laid.

Well, if people are operating as a business, of course, the goal is to make money. I will say, those prices you stated ARE outrageous! It really is not that hard. All I ever did was take a gallon jar, fill it 3/4 with vermiculite, put some water in the vermiculite to get it moist enough to clump with a fistfull, bury the eggs in it almost all the way except a fingerprint sized area on top, and put it in a place where the temps were good for incubation. Had very good success, and literally spent around $5 or less to do so, paying just for the cost of the vermiculite itself.

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Genesis 1:1

Last year's incubation box (with lid off to show inside); a Styrofoam box, a lasagna pan with vermiculite/perlite, a zoomed 8 watt uth, a thermostat, thermometer, a cake rack to lift the lasagna pan off the uth. Have similar somewhat larger set up going year round for cricket production. During summer heat waves have to put frozen gel packs in to keep temps in proper range. Will soon be doing fence lizard eggs, as some of my females are beginning to look gravid.

If I was manufacturing and marketing these devices I'd have big overhead with advertizing, production, distribution, taxes, and so forth. That would add to the cost to the consumer. Another thing, specialty hobbyist items are pricy. At my local Petco I saw some little special dishes for meal worms that cost $2.99. A jar lid would work just as well.
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.

i love incubating eggs. that was the best part of the hobby for me. assuming they are making money i would love to be selling those incubators, hahaha.

that said, this plywood bobsled of an incubator worked just fine for everything i put into it. enjoy your project, i'd be interested in seeing pics when you're done.

daveb

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alcohol, tobacco and firearms should be a convenience store, not a government agency

My incubator is just my snake room in general. My snake room flucuates from the high 70's to the hgigh 80's and my eggs are in tuppaware containers with moist vermiculite.

Don't need to spend any money on an incubator.....serves no purpose in my case. Over rated. All my moisture is in my containers and the hear is already in the room and my temps flucuate.

Kerby...
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Life is like a bunch of fish in an aquarium....we all get along (bonding) until I want to eat you....and I do.

depends on what you're breeding. I don't work only with North American temperate snakes. In a couple years I hope my cribos go and my king rats may go next year.
Hell, one of these days I may breed savus or something too
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We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion people if you had to be beautiful to get laid.

I know, but this is the kingsnake forum and specifics were given. No incubator needed on my part. I did have one in the 90's when I bred leopard geckos.

Kerby...
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Life is like a bunch of fish in an aquarium....we all get along (bonding) until I want to eat you....and I do.

I've had to end my herp breeding activities, but back in the day, my incubator was a simple setup: a set of shelves on top of my rack cages.
I incubated at the ambient room temp. I was in Florida, so a/c was used to keep room temps around 80--probably 78-82.
I used sphagnum moss and kept it pretty moist. If i saw reduced condensation on the inside of a box, I'd open it and spray it again. I did NOT provide any air holes in the boxes, because i didn't want the little fruit or carrion flies breeding in the boxes. Instead, I'd open all the boxes maybe 3 times a week and use the lids to fan fresh air into the box.
This worked fine for all the Colubrids I bred. I toyed (at great expense) with a wine cooler converted to incubator, with added failsafe devices to prevent runaway temps. It still never got to a point where i trusted it. I know numerous people who lost lots of eggs when their incubators malfunctioned. I didn't want to take that chance, especially when it wasn't necessary for the species i was working with.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I have been hatching eggs in my hot water closet for years. The one change I probably should make is I have been using my regular containers with holes in them and I do occasionally have issues with flies. I think this year I may go "holeless".

--Dennis

Those expensive incubators look good and can hold rather constant temps, a necessity for python eggs.

You can do your own version with the used refridgerator shell you spoke of.

Most people use Flexwatt as the heat source. The nice thing about that is you can use a long piece, then cut it down to adjust until it is right. What you don't want is so much heater that your incubator can turn into an oven quickly. You want the right amount of heater so that the incubator only gets so warm under normal conditions.

I have used heat rope because it is resistant to water. I set an aluminum bar (from Home Depot, it was 1/8 inch thick extruded aluminum about 1.5 inch wide or so) at the bottom of a box and raised it up off the floor about an inch using bolts. Then I wrapped the heat rope spirally around the bar for its length. I taped the excess heat rope on the back wall. This worked really well. If too much heat, just make the winds a bit farther apart and run the excess rope out the side or back of the box. This is easy to adjust on the fly.

For less temp fluctuation, use a proportional controller. For colubrids, a less expensive ON/OFF controller is fine. If you want a failsafe, add an ON/OFF controller in series with your main controller.

I'm actually planning on using the heat rope on this one, I'm just not sure how much of it I should use (not having experience with it). It's a standard ish mini fridge, like 24x24x30". I usually err on the side of too little--I can just let it run as soon as the pre lay shed takes place to make sure it's ramped up. It'll hit temps eventually...
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We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion people if you had to be beautiful to get laid.