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Hova Bator incubators

HerpVenue

HerpVenue

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Okay, I have just completed a study on this thing.
or should I say, I have an ongoing study on this thing.

Last year my Hova bator incubator worked fine.

this year I am having serious troubles.

I had it set up perfectly a month before my macklots eggs were laid.
Three days before I went on vacation....the temperature kept going up.
So on the last day...I put a secondary thermostat to turn of the machine whenever it would go to 91.
well when I got back from vacation.....The hovabator was registering an 85. The secondary thermostat i had was working fine..I even had it in a room were the temperature is always warm. The little wafer thing inside seems rusted. and now the temperatures fluctuate on their own. the tmperature adjuster does not seem to be doing the job too well anymore. i think this might be due to the rust on the wafer.
I lost 6 of my 10 macklotts eggs.

anyway....maybe this is just an isolated incident.
I hope others have had better luck. next year i hope to buy one of those big fancy shmancy ones.
 
Your not alone Ritchie

Mine hasnt held the temp at all since I got it last month. I have since built a homemade fridge incubator out of a dorm fridge that for the last 4 days has only varied +/- 0.4 degrees.
 
Man, Ritchie, be careful of thermostats!

I'll give you a little scenario that happened to me years ago.

My wife (Connie) and I have been working with leopard geckos for a long time. We always have just set the eggs up at basic room temperature (83+- degrees) and took the sex ratio as whatever we got, which was basically many more females than males. But a guy we were selling to wanted to get more males, so he came over one day with his incubator and wanted us to set up a bunch of the eggs at 90 degrees to give more males out of the hatchings.

Being the cautious type that I am, I set up the incubator for 90 degrees, then put in a minimum/maximum thermometer to monitor the temps continuously. For the first couple of days, it stayed pretty much right on the money, only varying a couple degrees either way, and tended to agree with the incubator's thermometer. BTW, this was a homebrew setup.

But one day I came home from work, and although the incubator's thermostat showed 90 degrees, the min/max thermometer was showing that at some point since I last checked it, the temps in the incubator had shot up to 120 degrees! Now you can imagine what would have happened had we set up eggs in there. Thing is, we probably wouldn't have had any clue at all about why they all went bad.

Be REAL cautious!
 
thermostats?

thermometers too for that matter.
I have an electronic one registering 90 another electronic one registering 85
and a glass thermometer registering something else.

thermostats messing up.
supposedly first class thermometers not working
temps going up and down up and down.
I sure do hope these eggs do fine.
 
UPDATE

Just to let you guys know.
I have been testing another hova bator set up that I have.
It can be found here
http://www.ritchiereptiles.homestead.com/Incubator.html

This set up is my homemade incubator. It is larger. Holds more medium. And has been real steady since I turned it on in the Beginning of December.

I guess the stand alone hovas can't cut it.
But when you take the top and incorporate it into a bigger incubator.... Then it works better.

Well that is my experience.
 
You probably already know this, but here it is anyway. That little chip thingy (I don't actually know what it looks like) needs to be replaced "Often". I've been shopping for my first incubator this week and almost all of the places that sell Havo-Bators also sell replacement chips for about $17 to $21. I *Think* the best price I saw was at LLL Reptile supply.

Now tell me a bit more about the secondary thermometer. Are you talking about the thermostat units I have the heat for the snake tanks plugged into? They turn the heat off when it reaches the preset temp right?

Another thing~ All my thermometers read different as well, so I have arbitrarily decided that my temp gun is the "Acurate" thermometer here. (Based this on the price of the temp gun in comparison to the thermometers) I set a thermometer up where I want it, give it an hour to settle into a proper reading, then take a reading with the temp gun. Then I write myself a note telling myself how off that particular thermometer is (IE~ +4F or -3F) and stick it to the outside of the tank closest to the location of the thermometer.
 
17-21 for the wafer?

I am goping to get a real incubator from Big apple next season.

this wafer hove thing sucks
 
Easy way to check your thermometers: Take the temp of a glass of icewater jammed full of ice. It should be very near 32F. I test my digitals (those Springfield Instruments ones for ten bucks at most dept. stores, with the outside probe) this way, and they've all been accurate so far.

I definately use an on/off thermostat with my Tiny Giant (worse than a Hovobator...) incubator. One thing to remember about these little incubators is that they're designed to incubate chicken eggs, and those cook at I believe 100F, which is too hot for herp useage. (AFAIK, never seen an incubation temp that high IME) My Tiny Giant (crap, avoid) incubator won't go below 95 with the wafer thermostat turned to the lowest setting. The little bugger is also very succeptable to temp spikes.

I'd suggest putting the on/off thermostat on the lowest end of the incubation temp range for whatever you're incubating and testing it to make sure it'll work. A lot of the on/off thermostats don't handle very low wattage devices reliably. (I've had good luck with the ESU thermostat)
 
Oh, and as long as I'm going on about thermometers: Throw out anything you have that's made by a reptile company, especially the strip things. I've measured the strips at 30F over what they're reading, which can be a big enough difference to kill some herps. The analog thermometers are subject to sticking due to rust. Mercury thermometers shouldn't be used inside a cage. That only leaves temp guns and digitals with probes, both of which are accurate enough for most uses. One of these days, I'm going to catch the Radio Shack temp guns on sale for thirty bucks. Everyone seems to find that deal except me.
 
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