Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey All,

Just wanted some opinions.....I'm having a hard time finding a container that is shallow (to fit in the Hovabator, yet has a large volume for my vermiculite.

After giving this some thought, I was wondering what would be wrong with filling the entire Hovabator with vermiculate / water mixuture. That would give me the maximum volume, thus the most consistent humidity. (and maybe keep a small shallow dish of water in there as well.

I just was wondering what the difference would be in keeping the eggs in a container inside the Hovabator instead of just putting the entire contents of vermiculite into the Hovabator.

Your thoughts would be much appreciated!

Allen Lloyd

If you get condensation built up inside the unit, it could possibly short out the wafer and start a fire would be my first concern. Second would be interfering in said wafers accuracy.
I went to Home Depot, bought some foam board about an inch thick and cut higher walls out for my hovabator. I inserted the pieces around the inside lip (where the lid originally rested)and glued them in place (using pins to keep the 4 walls square while the glue dried). After the glue dried, I laid the lid on top made sure it was square and then used clear duct tape to make a flexible hinge. I used several tailor pins to lock the lid down. This system worked out perfectly, added 8 inches in height and hatched my clutch of Woma eggs. Not bad for a foam box.
Good Luck
Brett

"The reward of a thing well done is to have done it"
Ralph Waldo Emerson

First off, I love our hovabators. They are cheap, control a constant temp within 1 degree and so far we've hatched all of our leopard gecko and uromastyx eggs in them without a problem.

We've always used the small gladware containers...they only really hold maybe 6 uromastyx eggs each and you can only really get 4 container in there so....the way we do it...you'd only get 24 eggs in the hovabator...which is kind of a small amount.

Using your idea should be perfectly fine...I don't see why you couldn't fill the whole hovabator up with vermiculite and add a container of water...the hovabator is meant for chick eggs and has a plastic tray in the bottom meant for water...I very much doubt you'd short out anything because it's meant for high humidity.

We've also incubated leopard gecko eggs, tokay gecko eggs, and veiled chameleon eggs using just an old fish sytrofoam shipping box (or a styrofoam cooler) and put a vase or fish bowl in the styrofoam box, filled with water and put a fishtank heater in the container of water. You can turn the heater up or down to control the temps. But get a digital thermometer to make sure you've got an acurate temp.

With the styrofoam cooler incubater you've just got to take into consideration that it get VERY humid, and the fish tank heater is not as accurate as the hova's wafer at controling temps...the fish tank heater can only really stay with 3-5 degrees of temps. Also the fish tank heater's max temp in the box I use really only makes it to 86 degrees tops....so this method has never been used with anything like our uro eggs or bearded eggs that require higher/dryer temps.

Hope this helped.
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Chris Vanderwees

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