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Home made incubator. Works for anything!

R

Reptilebaby

New member
I wanted to share how I made an incubator myself back when I was raising geckos.

First get an aquarium-any size but I found that a 5 gallon worked best.

Next get a couple red bricks and put in the tank on their sides, not standing on end. They should be lying so that you get the most surface area from them-it keeps things more stable.
fill with water until bricks are half submerged, then put a fully submersible heater in the water.

Then take however many plastic shoeboxes with lids you are wanting and fill with a couple inches of moistened vermiculite. Poke several holes in the lids and put them on the bricks.

Put a thermometer on top of the shoeboxes. And then last, put either a piece of cardboard over most of the top of the tank, or you can use plastic wrap. DON'T cover the entire top of the tank!
Leave only about 3 inches uncovered.

You'll have a incubator, that, while it won't look too pretty, will do a stand up job of incubating your eggs for you...and it's going to LAST for you!!
 
That is kinda how I hatched my snakes this year, but used a large storage tub. Back years ago when I bred was all I knew to use then. Will prob do the same next year
 
Works better I thought than all those fancy incubators I've seen. :) I happened to have all the stuff on hand to do it, and it was an emergency at the time. lol. I had just bought my geckos and hadn't realized that 3 were about to lay eggs!
 
My mother even used a similar set up when she was brooding baby birds. She had an old 10 gallon aquarium and set it on a heat pad with old towels on the tank, and each baby bird was in one of those old plastic strawberry baskets.
 
chris68 said:
I do it almost the same way, just substitute an old Igloo cooler for the aquarium :)
Click to expand...

I also did a cooler for mine. And my mom happened to have a wire type rack that you would use in a kitchen pantry or whatever, and it fit perfectly in the cooler to hold the shoebox bins above the water.
 
LOL I haven't had it for years. Got to make another one. I liked it better than the Hovabator I bought this year-set it up to get warm and I did NOT like the temp pluctuations. Thankfully none of my snakes laid this year.
 
I just used my hallway closet this past year.

I actually bought an incubator, but I ran out of room in it...
so I put the overflow in the closet.

They hatched fine.

Is there an opinion that a homemade incubator works better than a closet?
 
Hey I use a cupboard!! I thought about buying an incubator but why? lol My eggs always hatch between 55 and 65 days even when temps dropped into the mid to low 70's last year.
 
That is what I thought...

I think that my linen closet works just as well as any incubator... and cheaper.

Plus, I have read that a cooler temperature leads to babies that weigh more and are more hardy than at a higher temperature/shorter incubation.
 
Alright, I have a cooler, a submersible turtle heater that has a preset thermostat of 78 degrees, a plexi-glass sheet cut to cover the top, and the bricks and wire rack inside to go go on top...

If someone could tell me a) if this all is good materials/products to use? and b) is there any real pertinent information that I should know before I put it all together? Any help ASAP would be appreciated, as I noticed that I have eggs (sooner than expected).

Thanks peoples!
 
*Update

Set it all up, and it looks pretty good. I'll post photos in a little bit. Right now I'm mostly curious about air flow. The initial post says to leave about 3 inches of space, but that just seemed a little much in the cooler. I have about an inch and a half, so hopefully that works?...

BTW, I hadn't actually counted the eggs in the lay-box when I posted, as I didn't want to disrupt her before I had the incubator setup. But there are 11 fertile eggs, all in one pile (with one clear slug to the side). I'm thinking that keeping them in a clump is the best idea, because pulling them apart just felt too intrusive, and I didn't want to tear/disorientate them in any way. The eggs are from my very lightly colored Anery Bloodred x Ghost Blood Red, so I'm hoping very much that they successfully hatch.
 
RobbiesCornField said:
Congrats, Michael, and good luck!
Click to expand...
Thank you! Hopefully this idea works like it should.

The Styrofoam one I have is just so small, and I really don't trust the heating element or the temperatures. This thread game me some ideas to work with.

IMG_0156.jpg
This is in the 36QT cooler without the egg bin, thermometer and plexi-glass lid...

IMG_0160.jpg
...And with.

I hope this looks adequate. I kind of went with my best guess of what something like this would be constructed like.
 
The first year, I used the same concept, with an Igloo. I had pics, but I think they're on my other laptop, which crashed. I did end up with a mega sized Igloo cooler, which I saved to use as an incubator, but I haven't yet.
Last year, I incubated in the closet in my snake room. It worked great.
Since then, I picked up a non working wine cooler, to make into an incubator. I haven't set it up yet, I don't have any babies this year.
 
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