Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Seeing how we are on the topic, I'm going to be making an incubator soon. What is a good size to work with, what is a good way to heat it, ranco thermostat is already on its way. What size perlite container would one idealy use? Like Bob, FR said mass of incubating medium, makes alot of sense to me. Any input would be great at this point, as I all I have ordered is the temp controler. Frank got ant pics of your incubating room. Is the reason for this stable temps?? Thanx for any input, clint

We made one from an old refridgerator. Four feet of 4ft 11in 20 watt flexwat. Ranco temp controler. Its working fine.
Hope that give you some ideas

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Well, why I built a room was simple, I ran out of room in my incubators. But, the idea came from Dave and Tracy Barker, when I was a python breeder, they were constantly telling how much better a room was. I believe Dalles Zoo had a walkin incubator room as well. Dave Barker was a keeper there.

He did not explain the reasons a room worked better, it was just better. So instead of building lots and lots of incubators, I decided to build a room. The result was simple, Dave was right, rooms are much more forgiving. The eggs act very different.

So, now my incubators sit empty. Actually when I have eggs from very rare monitors, I would put spilt them between the room and incubators. That way I stand a better chance of not screwing all them up at once. The pic below is off an old incubator.

I use to build and sell them, but unfortunately, not many had the forsight to buy them. Now people want me to build them one, sorry I don't do that anymore. FR

The Breeding/Incubation forum of [bleep] has had a number of threads over the past couple of months about home-made incubators, ranging from converted refrigerators to home made forced air incubators. Peruse the various threads and you'll see photos, comments on pros and cons and even the types of fans and thermostats used.
Breeding/Incubation forum

I guess I am not allowed to mention another forum here.

I'll email the link to you

I don't think your allow to link to it. hahahahahahahaha FR

Wow thats one kick (bleep) forum. I wish I could see that (bleeping) forum. Hahaha

That's odd thought you could atleast say the name of another forum just not link to it.

Thats to bad I have alot of people that ask me about incubators. Would be nice to be able to send them someplace rather then have to explain it all.

I have one made from an old freezer, as well as one made from a stereo cabinet. Both of them work good.

I used to have one made from a rubbermaid tub but it wasn't very reliable for hatching anything that had long incubation times.

Here is a link to a site showing an incubator room, Incubation Room

My friend also just purchased a nice incubator, maybe you might be interested in doing the same?? it can be found under the classifieds section of KS High Capacity Incubators

I'm new at monitor egg incubation, so keep that in mind, but what I did was pick up an old bar fridge and converted it. Most places that take trade-ins have old fridges out back waiting for the scrap heap and are happy for you to take one away.

In this pic, the egg shelves have been removed so you can see where I placed the thermostat and thermometer probes (in the centre of the back). The heat source is four 15w red 'party' bulbs and the thermostat is a Habistat dimming thermostat. Dimming thermostats make the bulbs last longer than on/off thermostats and also prevent the temperature spikes that occur with most on/off thermostats, for the lights dim as they approach the desired temperature rather than switch off, then on again when the temperature has dropped.

Drilled pvc separators keep most of the light from hitting the eggs, but these can be pulled out for egg viewing. In the centre of the top is a flourescent light for viewing. Usually, when I want to view the eggs, I slide one of the egg shelves out and switch on the flourescent light.

There is no fan in there at the moment, for I experimented with one and it increased the temperature of the incubator (fridges are extremely well insulated), but I'm going to try a lower wattage fan next season. Having no fan means there is close to a 1C temperature gradient between the top egg shelf and the bottom egg shelf.

same fridge (again without the egg shelves), all lights blazing. You can see that the light doesn't hit where the eggs would be.

here is a close-up, showing the egg box shelves. There are little ramps at the back to tilt the egg boxes ever so slightly forward, the idea being that condensation on the top of the egg boxes would slide towards the front rather than drip on the eggs. This turned out to be unecessary, as there has yet to be any condensation on the top. I could have used the original fridge shelves, if they weren't so rusty.