Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I haven't had the best of luck over the years with incubating tawain beauty eggs,so i was thinking of letting the mother incubate them in her cage.
Any advice? I have had too much problems with humidity not enough humidity, so they dried out ,i have tried a variety of methods.

My first thought was to let this go to another because I'm not a pro but then again I've done ok with a simple setup.
I use a basic cooler chest made by rubbermaid. inside spread apart lay two bricks. Between them lay an aquarium heater.
I've seen folks who go for big watts, why? Its in a temperature controlled chest not a big aquarium in an air conditioned home. The chest is insulated.
All I use is 25 watts and it works perfectly.
On top of the bricks I lay a cut to fit piece of florescent lighting grating. Pour in enough water to cover the submerge the heater and then the grate by about a half inch.
I set the heater at about 80-83 degrees and let it warm up.
The eggs are then placed without turning in a deli cup of moist vermiculite or perlite. The side up that you find them stays that way when its transferred to the incubator.
Set the deli cup on the grate and the water will warm it from below.
The aquarium heater will maintain the proper temp and the water will maintain the the humidity in the closed chest.
Check the water level every couple of days and add as necessary.
I use a Zoomed digital thermometer that has a probe. The probe stays in with the eggs and the part with the digital read out sits on top of the cooler for me to double check the heater from time to time.
The eggs will hatch almost 60 days from the day they were laid.
I try to keep the temp on the lower end of the range as high temps cause birth defects.
I recently considered getting a $150 minifridge looking incubator but read reviews that said the temp varies as much as 4 degrees from top to bottom. I think my cheap setup is more constant with its temps.
Good luck with it, Mike.

shoe box
drill 1 1/4 inch hole in top
half fill with vermiculite
wet it to desired wetness/dampness
find a shelf above the refridgerator, NOT ON the fridge...the door opening will shake the box
fridges put off heat...
works fine....for most colubridae

....my cave rats are in box ,setting on a shelf in a rack in the snake room, stays around 80 on that rack...not sure the temp is correct...but I'll find out....if you have a snake room....you have heat source...

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........JY