Incubating Media - Your Insights, Thoughts, and Ideas

[Taceas]

I'm curious as to what most of you use for incubating media what your thoughts are on it, what has worked, and what hasn't. Also if you have any tricks for determining correct moistness and what containers you use for incubating eggs in feel free to share.

I've tried long-fiber sphagnum moss and fine grade vermiculite so far.

I initially used moss and have had really good results with it. It can tend to have particulates, leaves, and stems from foreign plant matter than can mold. But generally every batch I've gotten has been decent and clean. I've had the best hatching results with moss, not much fussing with it after the eggs are in and I just set it and leave it. I have gotten one bad bag of moss which was last year. It had a lot of little waxy leaves in it that tended to mold rather quickly. For the price I paid it just seemed extremely low grade. I ended up throwing all of it in the compost pile after a while, I couldn't keep it from molding.

Vermiculite I've had mixed results with. I believe I got it to the correct moistness, but still I had more problems with mold on the eggs than I ever had with moss. Not to mention the tops of the eggs were hard and crusty. I also noticed most that did hatch on it slit their shells around the sides of the shell, which I attribute to the hardened shells where it was exposed. All in all I found it more of a horrible mess to deal with, more mold problems, and harder to keep a decent humidity up with (either too wet or too dry). In a closed container, the eggs molded easily...in a ventilated deli-cup, the eggs dried out too quickly. It just ended up being more work than I thought there should be.

I've not tried perlite for incubating corn eggs with but I don't really like the texture of it. I use it occasionally for my orchids and its really abrasive and again you're not enveloping the eggs in a nice soft, comfy medium, but rather they're resting on top of what are basically rocks.

I have ordered a bag of the new Hatch Rite incubating medium advertised in Reptiles magazine. I can't find any information on what exactly it is, but it looks promising in that it's already pre-mixed and properly moistened. So I'll give it a whirl and let you know how that goes. Anyone else planning on trying it?