Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does anyone have any plans/instructions on how to build an incubator from a large cooler? Thanks

Put bricks in the bottom of the cooler spaced far enough apart to support your egg boxes. Fill with water to within 1/2" of the top of the bricks. Put in 1 preferably 2 submersible aquarium heaters the second one is in case of failure you'll have a back up. I also like to add a power head or some other kind of pump to circulate the water to avoid hot spots.

My preference for egg boxes are sterilite or rubbermaid plastic shoe boxes filled with perlite, mixed 1:1 perlite to water by weight or 10:1 perlite to water by volume. That would be 1 cup or any other measure perlite to 10 cups or measures water. This would give you just about perfect humidity. Put an aquarium heater, the suction cup kind in the egg boxes and adjust heater temps until the desired temp is reached in the egg boxes. Have all of this ready in advance you don't want to be mucking about with this once your eggs come. You will get lots of condensation on the outside of the boxes but that won't hurt anything. If you get moisture condensing on the lid inside, unlikely, tap the lid outside of the icubator to shake off excess and reduce humidity. If you notice eggs deflating, again unlikely, mist the sides of the egg boxes not the eggs directly.

Some drill small holes in the egg boxes but I prefer them without. I check my eggs twice a week and this allows for adequate air exchange without the holes. Mark the top of all eggs with a soft pencil before removing them from the laying site. Do NOT change this orientation. Place eggs in perlite buried about 3/4's deep. Using this system I've very seldom had to make any adjustments throughout the incubation period. Same system has been in use for years and the only failures I've had were from infertile eggs.

Hope this helps.
BigT
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Hope this helps.

BigT
There is a difference between ignorance and stupidity. The ignorant can be taught, stupidity is beyond our control.

I ran pretty much the identical setup to BigT for over three years in the lab I ran. Only difference was I used plastic to elevate the incubation boxes over the water.

If you prefer a dry-air incubator and controlling your moisture within the substrate itself there are some basic modifications.

First, don't use an aquarium heater, obviously. I like to use an Ultratherm Heat Pad from The Bean Farm. They come in a variety of sizes and you'll likely find one that fits nicely into the bottom of your cooler.

I then place several bottles of water directly onto the Ultratherm to provide thermal mass.

On top of the bottles I place two layers of plastic "egg-crate" light covers to provide an air space. Honestly, it's probably not necessary with the water bottles in place but I use it anyways.

The heat pad is plugged into a thermostat and the probe is taped in place.

Dry air incubators are more expensive and work best in rooms that are about 10*F cooler than the desired incubation temperature. Open-water incubators as described by BigT do not struggle when incubation temps are close to ambient room temps due to the evaporative cooling effects of water.

But many people do prefer a dry-air incubator for one reason or another.
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Current snakes:

1.1 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Silver/Yellow)

3.4 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Green)

2.1 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black)

Thanks for the great info,

About the aquarium heaters, do I rely on the built in thermostat of the aquarium heater of can I hook it up to a helix or something? Thanks again

You can certainly run the aquarium heaters through a thermostat but it is not absolutely necessary. With a large volume of water the temps are remarkably stable.

That's actually an important consideration. If you use a high-wattage heater in an incubator that just has a few gallons of water you can see temperature flucuations, especially in a well insulated cooler.

It's better to get a lower wattage heater and try to keep the water volume fairly high. At least according to the limited testing I did in the lab.
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Current snakes:

1.1 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Silver/Yellow)

3.4 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Green)

2.1 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black)