I have 23 turtles that live outdoors when the weather gets nice. Consequently, I have aquarium heaters galore. Some of them have temperature gauges - one brand in particular has a setting of 81 degrees, which is what I like. I always have a thermometer in the water, so I can verify the temperature.

I've used beverage coolers, cement mixing trays and plastic storage boxes - all with equal success. I put about 4 inches of water in the incubation box and then put some bricks in it. The 4 inches of water insures that when heated, the box will maintain a stable temperature. I heat the water with the aquarium heater for several days, keeping an eye on the water temperature, before adding any containers with eggs.

I set the eggs up (usually in Tupperware) in lidded containers on top of the bricks. These containers will float in the water, so to avoid that, the water should only cover 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch of the bottom of the containers holding the eggs. I use lids on both the egg containers as well as the incubation box. Lids are necessary on the egg containers, otherwise you'll get way too much humidity and potentially drown the eggs.

In the setup I can put additional containers with eggs on top of the existing containers, because the air is heated as well. I tend to check eggs about once a week. There is no harm done in removing each egg container, looking it over, and returning it to the incubation box. In the wild it is quite likely that eggs are subjected to temperature fluctuations.

An important thing to remember when artificially incubating eggs is to place the incubation box where the outside temperature will stay at 80 degrees or below. Often heatwaves seem to be the cause of babies with deformities (spinal kinks). So I like to incubate eggs in a garage or basement.

Corn Snake eggs do not need to be incubated if you have summertime daytime temperatures in the 70s and 80s. The idea with artificial incubation is to speed up the hatching process.

Tim

Plastic storage box that I used to incubate eggs last year (shown with lid removed):



Third Eye

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• Home made incubator - meliisa, Tue Mar 30 16:22:00 2010
• Keep It Simple IMO - KevinM, Tue Mar 30 17:18:46 2010
• RE: Home made incubator - PHLdyPayne, Tue Mar 30 18:10:03 2010
• RE: Home made incubator - tspuckler, Tue Mar 30 18:27:50 2010