Brinsea Octagon 20 Advance EX with automatic Humidity Pump and Trader Joe eggs

[FridayYet]

Thanks you two, it will be here Friday and I am going to play with it this weekend!

 

[FridayYet]

Does anyone have a picture of the autoturn cradle drive mechanism? I finally had a chance to assemble my incubator, and my autoturn drive arm is not connected to the motor, it just hangs down freely.

I e-mailed Brinsea support, but I'd like to see a picture of how it's supposed to look.

Thanks!

 

[Yorkshire Coop]

Is this what you are meaning

Hope this helps

 

[FridayYet]

Yes it does! Thank you so much.

Looks like mine is missing a screw to hold the arm to the motor, it just hangs there like a pendulum.
I haven't heard back from Brinsea yet, hopefully they can send me one.

 

[FridayYet]

UPDATE: Brinsea sent me the screw a while back and everything seems to be working correctly. I'm moving the table to another wall away from the window, then will let it run for a day to do a real test. But since I'm going to incubate later this week, I have a question.

We have super low humidity here, sometimes dropping into the single digits. Do you put any water in the bottom channels if I use the automatic humidity pump or do i just let the pump tale care of the whole humidity regulation?

Thanks!

 

[Yorkshire Coop]

No I don't add water to the channels but we don't have low humidity. The UK is quite a wet climate. If yours is super low I would maybe try the water added. What I would do is fill one channel half way but set your humidity low on the display as the humidity climbs the pump should not kick in because you have it set low but it will still give you the reading on the display. If it's struggling to reach what you want then I would set the pump to your desired level it should kick in then to keep at the right level.

Or just set what you want on the humidity and see how the pump performs. If it's constantly going I would then add the water to the channel. Brinseas really do hold humidity well though so you will have some moisture release from your eggs when you set them that will keep it up a little as they start to lose moisture.

 

[FridayYet]

Thanks! I've got it set at 40% and humidity today is around 15%. I'll listen for the pump and watch the water level in the reservoir. If it goes down too fast, I'll try adding some water to the incubator channel.

 

[BathrobeGardner]

Hopefully all is going well. I have an automatic pump and I DO NOT fill the reservoirs with water at all. The automatic pump is more than efficient. Good luck with your hatch.

 

[FridayYet]

Thanks BG, things look OK so far. When I lived in SoCal I probably wouldn't have needed to fill the channels either, but things are so different here in a high desert climate.

These eggs were shipped from a low altitude, so are less porous than local eggs. To help, I'm keeping the vent wide open and the humidity pump was running almost constantly to keep up. Once I filled one channel, it maintained at 40% and the pump only inputs more water once in a while.

Eggs were set yesterday at 1PM. Turner is off for 2-3 days to help air cells reattach. Hoping for the best.

 

[FuzzyHens]

Great thread! I'm getting ready to upgrade my incubator to an Octagon 20 Advanced EX so it was great to hear from people who already have it!!

Anyone hatch dark eggs with theirs? I'm planning on getting some nice dark BCM eggs and I know these can be difficult. If you have hatched dark eggs, what did you set the humidity at through the hatch and at lock down?

Thanks!!!