incubator is set up

[Dom]

Interesting subjects .. Can I say the best advise that I have ever learned .. Especially to the ppl who want to see there eggs..

The more often you open you egg box the lower your hatch out percentage..

[smeagel]

My temps have settled in at 90.6 for the last 5 days.

[crocdoc]

Originally posted by JDouglas
... If condensation is occurring at a rate that is equal to evaporation you will have a dry box with wet sides.

Also, condensation on the sides of the egg chamber can cause your substrate to dry out. As the water evaporates from the vermiculite it will run down the sides and back into the substrate around the edges. After awhile the vermiculite around the outside will be soaked and the center will dry out. If the eggs are in the center they will also dry out...

...If the temperature in your incubator is even you will not nave any condensation. Instead the air will become saturated to 100% humidity. If the walls of the egg chamber are cooler than the rest of the incubator condensation will form.

I get a small amount of condensation on one side of my egg boxes, not dissimilar to that seen in the photo you have posted. In summer (when my incubator is in the garage to avoid overheating) the left hand side of the egg box gets a small amount of condensation because the incubator is near my reptile food freezer (I have since put some insulating material in between). In winter (when the incubator is in my home) the left hand side of the egg box gets a small amount of condensation because that is the side closest to the door.

Now this is where it gets interesting. As I am incubating lace monitor eggs rather than python eggs, the incubation time is much much longer and during the course of that time the slight difference in humidity between the centre and the sides of the egg boxes starts to show effects. Last year, the eggs in the centre of the box hatched a fair bit sooner, in line with some scientific studies of monitor eggs which showed that eggs incubated on a slightly drier substrate hatch sooner than those incubated on a slightly wetter substrate. For my eggs, the difference between the eggs in the middle and the eggs on the side ranged from 20 to 40 days (ie the eggs near the walls of the egg box sometimes took as much as 40 days longer to hatch than the ones in the middle).

This year, I've started to use the difference in humidity to my advantage. One of the eggs in the middle was a bit dimpled, so I gave it a spell near the left hand side of the egg box and it filled out within a week.