best egg incubation material

i have a few hundred eggs some on vermiculite and some on perlite and on both of them i add water ever 2 weeks am i doing something wrong or this is normal and whats the best one to use...also whats the best way to add water because i cant tell if im adding to much or to little thanks...

I personally like vermiculite better!

When adding water I like to use a hair applicator bottle and carefully run it along the sides so the drops of water go straight down the sides and not near the eggs. I add about a tablespoon a month, but it doesn't always need it. Your best bet is weighing it when you first do it and add water accordingly IMHO good luck with your eggs. I am currently trying out vermiculite, perlite and hatch rite to see which I like best, so far they are all doing ok

Anybody ever try mixing some water crystals in with the perlite or vermiculite?

chameleonoobie said:

Anybody ever try mixing some water crystals in with the perlite or vermiculite?

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No, have you?

Dupontman2 said:

I personally like vermiculite better!

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I second that

I haven’t tried water crystals to help stabilize the moisture levels in an incubating material for reptile eggs, but I do use it in my cricket egg laying cups to keep the soil from drying out, seems to work very well for that.

I rarely have to add water. There are always beads of water on the inside walls of the container and inside the lid with mine....like a little eco system.

Please describe the setup you use so I can see if there's a reason you're losing moisture.

When I use vermiculite, I mix it so that it is between 70-80 parts water by weight to every 100 part vermiculite by weight. (This means if I have 100 grams of vermiculite I would add about 70-80 grams of water to the vermiculite. I usually aim for 75 ) It may seem dry, however it is just moist enough that I usually don't ever have to add any more water during the incubation and if I do add water, I drop a few drops to the corners of the container.

i like small sized vermiculite best, and burry the eggs under it, so not on top.
Perlite has worked for me too.

I'll tell you a little trick ;-)
When you have to add water every 2 weeks that is not the best you can do.
Thats is unstable, and might dry out, when you would not be looking for a long time.
Best is to take a plastic box, with only 2 tiny holes on each side, around 2-3 mm in diameter, that way you have to add water only maybe 2-3 times during an incubation periode of lets say 9 months. For diapausing species, you dont have to fill up mostly till after diapause which matches with cold/dry periods in nature and then more moist/warmer 2nd period.

Especially when a species needs to be incubated fairly dry, you can be more easy on the edge of drying out / still sufficient water

ok then i see my problem i have about 8 pinholes in some containers so i will have to do less air exchange but thats the prob and i forgot to mention i also use supreme hatching material and it seems like it retains water longer what is that stuff

15 years ago I was using containers with pinholes and would weigh the containers immediately after setting the eggs, then I could just top off the amount of water necessary to bring the containers back up to weight.

Since that time I've incubated thousands of lizard eggs including chameleons in containers without the pinholes. Means I never have to weigh the containers or worry about evaporation- the medium stays correct throughout incubation. I do this with all lizard eggs except for the really big ones (iguanas and tegus).

I tend to prefer vermiculite because it is easy to work with (I just saturate it with water and then squeeze it like crazy to get all the excess water to drip out- so there is no weighing involved at all) but I also use perlite when vermiculite is not available- I just weigh it out to nearly equal weights- maybe just a little less water by weight than perlite by weight, but not much, and never more water than vermiculite.

2 many holes allow the substrate to dry out quickly. personally i use vermic 1/1 ratio with water and only one hole on the side near the top about the diameter of a pencil.

good luck!

i use hatchrite..works like a charm..

@fluxlizard, if i understand correct, without pinholes, no oxygen can diffuse into the container in your case if i understand correct?
(i have always been wondering or that would work, thanks for the info)

I know they really must have a low oxygen demand, reptiles in general(because they are cold blooded) and then an egg probably even less. In the dround oxygen diffusion must be low too, and bacteria/plant roots also using up oxygen. How often do you then maybe open the container?

i air exchange every 2 weeks

I use vermiculite mixed at a .8 to 1 ratio in a sealed containier with one 1/8 hole drilled near the top of the container. I keep the containers in a sealed incubator with an open container of water that keeps the humidity of the incubator @90%. Knock on wood first clutch of panthers hatched at 100%. Buried half of the eggs and left the other half exposed the buried eggs hatched about 3 days before the uncovered. First babies that hatched are a little over 3 weeks old and seem to be doing great.

@fluxlizard, if i understand correct, without pinholes, no oxygen can diffuse into the container in your case if i understand correct?
(i have always been wondering or that would work, thanks for the info)

I know they really must have a low oxygen demand, reptiles in general(because they are cold blooded) and then an egg probably even less. In the dround oxygen diffusion must be low too, and bacteria/plant roots also using up oxygen. How often do you then maybe open the container?

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That's about the gist of it.

No air exchange = no evaporation.

The oxygen demand is much less than most think. And while there is some air exchange in healthy soil, realistically, it isn't a lot.

I open the containers when I want a better look to check something, never more than that.

Right now for example I have hundreds of bearded dragon eggs with no more than 9 to a ~6" X 6" X 1" box, and it would not only take a long while to open the incubators and unstack all the boxes (max of 40 in each incubator) and open each container, but it would involve more risk for me to screw things up to ventilate like that, as I stack my containers in the incubators so each stack would have to be messed with (with potential for me to accidentally knock an adjacent stack- things are packed fairly tight in usable space in the incubators), there would be temperature fluctuations in my incubators, egg containers would be moved around meaning the stuff in the eggs gets moved around when messing with them (tilt the container, tilt the fluid inside the eggs), I'm clumsy and might have an accident (which I've had many times LOL- rolled eggs are usually fine when reset but always gives me a heart attack), etc. Chameleon eggs are usually kept stacked in a cabinet under the sink in the bathroom, but same principles are in play.

So, many containers are never opened until things start hatching. Then I open and remove ready babies, gas exchange occurs at that time and babies that aren't ready to come out (for example attached remains of egg sack still on lizard or lizard not out of egg yet but head and shoulders out) remain in sealed containers for another day and this is no problem either which might surprise many people. If a bad egg occurs during incubation at some point and I see it I will open the lid and remove it. Gas exchange occurs at that time as well.

I started using this method of no ventilation when one of the world's foremost experts on lizard eggs and incubation at a university near me back in the mid 90s actually laughed at me when I explained I used pinholes for ventilation and asked her how she was keeping certain percentages of CO2 in her containers for some of her experiments when the eggs needed ventilation. Her reply was that the containers were always sealed and she chuckled asking me how much ventilation I thought eggs buried in a hole in the ground got in nature. She seemed genuinely surprised and was certainly amused ("what will they think of next?" with an eyeroll) that hobbyists were using pinhole ventilation for their lizard eggs. She never ventilated at that time and already had numerous studies published on incubation even in those days (many more now- I haven't kept up and don't even know if she still uses sealed containers or not, but they've always worked for me since that time and sure simplifies life, so I've never switched back to ventilated containers).

As was stated already, air holes seem unnecessary. Anyone who's bought a carpet from me has bought a baby hatched in an incubation container with no holes for air exchange. It only adds difficulty in maintaining humidity.

Kevin

thanks alot for all y'all help