sammer021486
New Member
- Messages
- 544
- Location
- Northern Ontario Canada
After having difficulties with my Hova holding steady temperatures this year, I decided to build an incubator that took up less space, but provided more space at the same time.
This was the design that I came up with. The total cost for this incubator was just under $50. I only had to spend $23 for the heat cable, $10 for the glass hinges, $6 for the wire shelving and $10 for the night time lighting.
The glass I asked a neighbour for after he had replaced his windows, the melamine was recycled from a shelf that I had built for the rabbit, when we had them, the thermostat is one of the Zoo Med 500R that I had replaced for Rancos, the fans were recycled from a laptop cooler, that no one really knows where it came from other than it was in the house and the weather stripping was some that was also at the house in a bin of tools.
I am calling this incubator, Bator1, as I learned a lot on how I would build another one, if I ever do. I would make it more tidy and better built, this one was built in two different locations and at different times so it resulted in some parts not fitting well together because of measurement errors by not having the incubator right there to get the proper measurement.
The top cubby is for the leopard geckos, the second cubby was built for the crested geckos and the bottom cubby was built for storage.
Close up of the leopard gecko cubby. After this weekend I will have to see if I can clean up the mess of the wires in the incubator to make it look cleaner. The fans are mounted in the bottom of the shelf, with one blowing down and one blowing up, this helped level out the 78, 82, 84, 91 gradient that I was getting, to 83, 83, 83, 82 bottom to top. The probe for the thermostat is suspended underneath the middle shelf, it is hidden by the container. The container is a typical container that I use, set up with superhatch to test how the incubator settled with the container in it after the test runs. There is a pair of dud eggs in the container to see how they are affected in the new incubator.
For my night time viewing pleasure. I was not sure what colour I wanted so I bought a blue and white set of wire to test it out. It actually does not look too bad with both the white and the blue on at the same time.
I am not sure at the moment if I will trim the melamine or not. I want to trim it, but after the lessons that I learned from building it I want to build a much better one and do not think that it is worth while trimming this one.
This was the design that I came up with. The total cost for this incubator was just under $50. I only had to spend $23 for the heat cable, $10 for the glass hinges, $6 for the wire shelving and $10 for the night time lighting.
The glass I asked a neighbour for after he had replaced his windows, the melamine was recycled from a shelf that I had built for the rabbit, when we had them, the thermostat is one of the Zoo Med 500R that I had replaced for Rancos, the fans were recycled from a laptop cooler, that no one really knows where it came from other than it was in the house and the weather stripping was some that was also at the house in a bin of tools.
I am calling this incubator, Bator1, as I learned a lot on how I would build another one, if I ever do. I would make it more tidy and better built, this one was built in two different locations and at different times so it resulted in some parts not fitting well together because of measurement errors by not having the incubator right there to get the proper measurement.
The top cubby is for the leopard geckos, the second cubby was built for the crested geckos and the bottom cubby was built for storage.
Close up of the leopard gecko cubby. After this weekend I will have to see if I can clean up the mess of the wires in the incubator to make it look cleaner. The fans are mounted in the bottom of the shelf, with one blowing down and one blowing up, this helped level out the 78, 82, 84, 91 gradient that I was getting, to 83, 83, 83, 82 bottom to top. The probe for the thermostat is suspended underneath the middle shelf, it is hidden by the container. The container is a typical container that I use, set up with superhatch to test how the incubator settled with the container in it after the test runs. There is a pair of dud eggs in the container to see how they are affected in the new incubator.
For my night time viewing pleasure. I was not sure what colour I wanted so I bought a blue and white set of wire to test it out. It actually does not look too bad with both the white and the blue on at the same time.
I am not sure at the moment if I will trim the melamine or not. I want to trim it, but after the lessons that I learned from building it I want to build a much better one and do not think that it is worth while trimming this one.
