16 Egg Amazon Incubator & quail beginner questions

[borillionstar]

I purchased a 16 Egg Incubator from Amazon called the Kktect or otherwise known as "Safego Egg Incubator for Hatching Eggs, Digital Mini Incubator with Automatic Turner and Egg Candler Tester for Hatching Chicken Duck Quail Bird Eggs (16 Eggs)"

I have noticed a few things and I have questions that have come up during my observation.

Is of writing this I have had 18 coturnix quail eggs of assorted size and color in the incubator for 19 hours, at 99.8 F on average.

Humidity swings from 21% to 55%, but averaging around 37%. I have noticed I am having difficulty keeping the humidity at a constant number, opening the little vent in the top and adding even the most minute amount of warm water can make it swing from one extreme to the other. The relative humidity of my house is and somewhat high at about 46% avg.

The second thing I have noticed is that the eggs are turning but seem to have bunched up or possibly started rubbing against each other.

1. Is the momentary humidity overall very important or are we more concerned about the running avg over time?

2. What can I do to help make the humidity more stable? I am trying those humidor packs, but it seems to have little to no effect.

3. Is it ok to open the incubator to scoot the eggs back up the rollers to unbunch them every 6 hours or so? The room temp here ranges from 70 - 81 F

 

[borillionstar]

You can find an interactive time and humidity graph as of 9 pm pst May 20th 2022, here
Incubator May 20th, 9 pm ( https://plotly.com/~borillionstar/1/ )

 

[Jaime918]

The holes next to your motor are for adding water, on mine the left hole is my main and the right hole is to help add extra for lockdown. My slightly larger version of a different brand doesn't have the vent cover but the hole isn't quite so large. Humidity swung in mine as well, I just had to add water more frequently. Keep the styrofoam on it!

I hope it works well.

 

[borillionstar]

Awesome thanks, yes I watched everything on youtube I could possibly find about mine and similar ones so did keep the styrofoam

 

[borillionstar]

Looks like 5 have nothing inside. 2 - 3 have super thick shells so candling them didn't work, those I put back in.

 

[borillionstar]

11 days in clearly something is growing in these eggs

Worried they aren't developing enough though