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............i've put a plan together (in my head) on building an incubator.i'm almost certain i'll use some kind of plastic material.i'd like your opinions on a heating source,thus far i've considered heat tape or a water container on the bottom with a aquarium heater.also i'm wondering on how much air exchange is needed,a computer fan on top with vents in the bottom or vents on top and bottom with gravitiy flow.

I'd recommend heat tape underneather some sealed bottles of water. The water will provide a lot of thermal mass to the incubator.

Ventilation is a tough question. I would have ventilation vents at the top and the bottom of the incubator and fabricate sliding doors over them that allow you to control the amount of air flow.

Here's a simple design that works as well as or better than commercial ones.

Sweater tub large enough to hold the number of egg boxes you anticipate having.

Bricks to support these boxes, the boxes can be stacked on top of one another if need be. Place the bricks in the sweater tub and fill with water to within 1/2" of the top of the bricks.

Submersible aquarium heater, I prefer two so in case one fails you have a backup, and either a powerhead or similar pump to keep water circulating.

Setup you egg boxes as if you were incubating eggs and put an aquarium thermometer into a box and bury as if it were an egg. Use this to adjust thermostat on heaters. Leave lids on egg boxes and sweater tub and DO NOT drill holes in them or the sweater tub. Open and check on your egg boxes at least once a week, this will give you the needed air exchange. You can check more frequently but you may need to spritz the egg boxes occaisionally to keep the humidity up. For the medium in the egg boxes I prefer perlite mixed at the ration of 1:1 water to perlite by weight or 1:10 water to perlite by volume. The perlite's coarser texture allows better air circulation around eggs and holds moisture well. I seldom have to add more water during entire hatching cycle. I've used this style for beardies, leo gex, too many snakes to mention. If you have a need for different incubation temps then you need to build more than one incubator but that would be the same with your design.

As for your design plans once you start with ventilation you will have a heck of a time maintaining humidity and temps without lots of monitoring, and you really don't need them.
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Hope this helps.

BigT

Perlite is cancerous to both humans and reptiles. Use vermiculite.
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Chris Vanderwees

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i had to buy some vermiculite the other day and wal mart,k mart and menards do not stock it,only perilite.i finally found some at a local garden store.can you expand on how you came to this conclusion?

I stumbled across the possible asbestos contamination of vermiculite issue [see post below] when I tried to restock my supply over a year ago and found it suddenly very hard to find. I’m not positive, but I think the asbestos issue must have scared off some of the big chain stores from carrying that product in their garden departments.

Anyway, one of the industrial uses of vermiculite is as a cushioning agent in packaging. So I ended up buying a humongous-sized bag of the stuff for cheap online from one of the same shipping supply companies where I buy newsprint for cage substrate. It was really inexpensive, even including the shipping, compared with the garden centers. ‘Course now I’ve got this 4 foot tall box of the stuff that would take a giant python incubation factory to use it all up.

-Joan

That's an interesting statement but you provide no substantiation for such a claim.

Perlite is made from Obsidian, a volcanic glass which is silica, the same silica found in playsand only it's amorphous while playsand has a hexagonal crystal structure the same as quartz. Silica is the second most common mineral after carbon. Obsidian is heated under controlled conditions until it expands into Perlite. There is a naturally occuring form of perlite found within some deposits of Obsidian that is called "Snowflake" Obsidian. Associated minerals that may be found within Obsidian are the Soda Silicates (feldspars) which create the "sheen" Obsidians often used in gemcutting, Tourmaline an aluminum silicate and Quartz. These associated minerals form within the Obsidian when super heated gases are infused into the volcanic glass while cooling. These gases slow the cooling process which allows the minerals to form in their more normal crystal structures. Interestingly Obsidian (amorphous), Opal (spherical) and Quartz (assymetrically hexagonal) are identical in their chemical makeup when in their pure forms.

Vermiculite is made from the Mica group, most commonly from Muscovite Mica which is a basic potassium aluminum silicate. It is found in three layer structures with Potassium, Calcium or Sodium found between the layers. Vermiculite is also made using a similar process to perlite which causes it to expand. If you look closely at your Vermiculite you can see the layers clearly. It was often used in the "olden" days as a substitute for glass as the layers could be flaked off thin enough to allow light penetration although it was/is translucent not transparent. The Mica group are metamorphic minerals found most often within Granite deposits.

(The above are summerizations taken from: "The Audobon Guide to Gems and Minerals", "Gemstones and Minerals Data Book", "Gemstones and Minerals for the Jeweler and Gemcutter".)

BTW the plastic that most of use in the form of shoe boxes for egg containers has been shown to be cancerous when heated in a microwave oven.

I would be interested to see any references you have pertaining to Perlite being cancerous. I'm not be a wisea$$ as you can see I have more than a passing interest in minerology as I'm a gemcutter and I am capable of learning new things.
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Hope this helps.

BigT

Hi Chris –

My understanding is that Perlite is quite inert, not that I’ve bothered to read up on it recently.
But I have read up on Vermiculite due to the asbestos issue. Perhaps you have confused the two products?
Lots of good information courtesy of the EPA at the link.

-Joan

Asbestos Contamination In Vermiculite

No sorry but I'm not confusing the two I double checked my facts with all of my references before posting the above. You're quite right that perlite being pure silica would be inert. Just as quartz playsand would be.
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Hope this helps.

BigT

My post was directed to Chris, cv768.

-Joan

>>No sorry but I'm not confusing the two I double checked my facts with all of my references before posting the above. You're quite right that perlite being pure silica would be inert. Just as quartz playsand would be.
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>>Hope this helps.
>>
>>BigT

DOH!!! My bad I should have realized. N/P

Hey, I like Chris’s idea of the sliding covers over ventilation holes idea, not for oxygen necessarily, but to help circulate the hot air. And with the sliders, you could always just close it off. Unless you build a tall incubator, I really don’t see the need for installing fans. Sure, there’s a small differential in temps between the top and bottom of my 3 foot tall incubator, but it’s performed just fine for over 20 years for my python eggs.

My suggestion, make the door as well as the egg boxes and lids see-through, so you don’t have to constantly open up the incubator. Especially towards the end, you can just shine a flashlight in to see if any heads are poking out of those eggs.

Whatever design you decide on, make sure you use a good-quality thermometer to double check your temperatures.

-Joan

N/P