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The make shift incubator I had to hustle up after returning from 5 weeks out of town to find ball python eggs in the cage the next day worked pretty good. I put 4 bricks in a 10 gal aquarium, filled water up to the bottom of the bricks, added an expensive model, submersible heater, and put the eggs in a rubbermaid container half filled with moistened vermiculite. Today, 61 days later, the little heads are emerging! But, I'd really like to build a incubator that doesn't have to sit in the guest bathroom tub for two months (the aquarium was for reps and wasn't recommended to hold water, the wife's a saint) I'm thinking of building a cabinet type with a door in the front, about like those little refrigerators, It might have to be two stacked, so I can use one for pythons and one for colubrids. Thanks for all the imput on incubators, I found some plans online as well. Anyways, to the exciting part, my pythons are emerging today. I have grandsnakes..here's the pic!

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1.1 Jungle Carpet Python
1.1 Ball Python
1.1 Corn Snake
0.1 Gray band Kingsnake
0.1 Desert Kingsnake
0.1 Pueblan Milksnake
1.0 Bullsnake
1.0 Rhodesian Ridgeback
0.1 Spouse
8 ball python eggs due any day now!

Congrats!!! Good thing they deceided to come out before you went out of town....
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www.MGReptiles.com
Professional Heating Supplies

Interesting how some of the most 'low-tech' solutions work the best eh? It's also interesting that a lot of newer incubators are starting to incorporate features like a large water resevoir to act as a heat resevoir to keep temps stable after opening an incubator and also some types are beginning to look at keeping relative humidity high while the eggs don't even sit on a moistened substrate. Anyway, good luck with the new babes - post some more pics when they're all the way out of the eggs.
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Matt Campbell
25 years herp keeping experience
Full-time zookeeper
Personal collection - 21 snakes (9 genera), 20 lizards (4 genera), 6 chelonians (2 genera)

Here are pics of them all in the same cage, I now have them separated, on newspaper and moistened papertowels with a waterbowl. Any ideas for some cheap temporary hideboxes, or is just being in the shoebox rack enough. Some of them have crawled under part of the newspaper, and seem to be happy there.
Oh, the other pic is me showing off my milksnake necklace, next to my Pueblan.

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1.1 Jungle Carpet Python
1.1 Ball Python
1.1 Corn Snake
0.1 Gray band Kingsnake
0.1 Desert Kingsnake
0.1 Pueblan Milksnake
1.0 Bullsnake
1.0 Rhodesian Ridgeback
0.1 Spouse
8 ball python eggs due any day now!

Nice! After all my years of keeping bizarre species I still have a fondness for ball pythons. I don't know why since they are so different from my other preferences, but they are still cool. And seeing eggs hatch still has not gotten old for me.

>>Any ideas for some cheap temporary hideboxes, or is just being in the shoebox rack enough.

It's been my experience that baby Ball Pythons like to have a nice snug and secure hide box and high humidity. You don't want the humidity high enough to create mold or skin issues but still probably higher than would be typical for adults. When they're that small you can cut down cottage cheese or margerine containers to use for hide boxes. Good luck with the young uns - they're nice-looking normals - seems like normals are getting to be a rarity these days.
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Matt Campbell
25 years herp keeping experience
Full-time zookeeper
Personal collection - 21 snakes (9 genera), 20 lizards (4 genera), 6 chelonians (2 genera)