Internal egg temperature and water much cooler than air temperature, normal?

Hi everyone, I've just joined this forum but i have been lurking for quite a while and have learnt a fair amount just from reading other members threads/posts.

On to my question, 15 days ago i set 60 jumbo coturnix quail eggs, this is not the 1st time i have incubated eggs but the last time i tried with a homemade cheap polystyrene incubator it was a disaster so this time round i had everything prepared beforehand. I have 3 brinsea incubators (mini eco, octagon 20 advance and octagon 20 mk11) and i made sure to check the temperatures with 3 different thermometers, a brinsea blue liquid thermometer, a brinsea mercury thermometer and a digital food thermometer, the 2 brinseas show identical readings but the digital one reads slightly higher. I set 48 eggs in the octagon advance and 12 in the mini eco, I've been candling and have discarded 22 eggs that didn't appear to be fertile. The other 36 don't let any light shine through and 2 seem to be only partially developed.

The thing that has worried me a bit is the water temperature in all 3 incubators (the mk11 has no eggs inside) is 7 degrees Celsius lower in temperature than the air temps, is that normal? What got me more concerned is that when i poked a hole in the non fertile eggs the temperature inside was also a few degrees lower than the air temperature inside the incubator.

Water that is evaporating uses energy, the lose of energy lowers the temperature. If you look into water wick hygrometer methods you'll see charts that directly relate difference in temp of water and air to Relative Humidity.

I can't really say about the egg you cracked. How large of hole made, time from making hole, removal from incubator, tiny size of quail eggs may all add up to the small difference in temp you noted.

Egghead_Jr said:

Water that is evaporating uses energy, the lose of energy lowers the temperature. If you look into water wick hygrometer methods you'll see charts that directly relate difference in temp of water and air to Relative Humidity. 

I can't really say about the egg you cracked. How large of hole made, time from making hole, removal from incubator, tiny size of quail eggs may all add up to the small difference in temp you noted. 

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I did think there might be a explanation for the water being cooler so thanks for the reassurance! I only really got a little worried when i checked the internal egg temperature, it had been sitting for 5 minutes or so out of the incubator and by the time i measured it was 7C cooler (like the water). The next day i took an egg out then poked a hole through it a minute after using my probe thermometer and it was 34.5C, i had no idea quail eggs cool down so fast.

I'm not even sure which thermometer to trust TBH, naturally i would have thought the 2 brinseas as they both have identical readings and one is a mercury thermometer. However when i tried the ice water test with the digital thermometer (not possible with the brinseas) it read 0.3C however it reads approximately 1C higher than the brinseas in the incubator.