Incubation Troubles

Our veiled is very gravid (thanks to you guys for helping us out on that!), and we're looking at incubators (the Thermal Hova Bator Incubator from LLLReptile.com) but we come up with a problem. Since we live in sunny South Florida, the room temperature is higher than the reccomended incubation temperatures. How do we cool the eggs to make them hatch at the correct temperature? We've been told that it should be kept at 75ºF-80ºF during the day with a 5º-10º drop at night. Are these accurate temps? What does everyone think we should do, babies are cooking in mom as we speak!!

You do not need an incubator unless your temps will drop below 68 during the 7+/- months of incubation. They need to be incubated in the dark at 68-80 degrees in a humid container (humid, not wet perlite).

I incubated mine in my kitchen on a shelf with a black pillow case covering them so that they did not get any light. We have no AC in the kitchen so the temps ranged in the summer from 80 days to 68 nights. Then when winter hit I did move them to a hova bator set at 80 days and I simply unplugged it at night for the night drop.

You shouldn't need to cool them, your room temps should be in the correct range to incubate them in a dark closet.

My last clutch was last spring, they were laid Aug 1 2004 and started hatching in March 2005. They take a couple of weeks to all hatch out, they start slowly at 1 a day for a few days then pick up from there.

Main thing to do is prepare for food, I had 65 of the 68 eggs hatch and went through 4 - 6 32oz fruit fly cultures twice a day once they were all hatched so you will want to get a fruit fly breeding kit at about 6.5 months incubation time so you get your flies well established for the hatchlings.

Wendy is quite right. You do not need, nor is it recommended, to have a fluctuation in daily temps. 75-80 degrees, if you are not equipped to creat a diapause, is fine. 68 is OK too, but will really lengthen out your incubation wait. A diapause would be something like 78 for the first month, 69 for the second and third, and then back to 78 until hatch. That will give you about a 7 month (+- two weeks) incubation. Otherwise it will be closer to 8-9 months. If you have a fluctuation daily, if that is how your house works, it is OK too. Its just not needed one way or the other.