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All you have to do is open the incubator lift out the tray, and take a look. As for attempting to pour water between the eggs, I suppose if you have a real steady hand, that'll work, but getting water on hatching eggs increases the risk of bacterial contamination. Why risk it? On the other hand, I suppose one runs the risk of dropping the danged eggs, so I guess that's a tossup. Those eggs are packed pretty tight in the
Brinsea . . .speaking of which . . . I actually don't care for Brinseas "rail system" of securing the eggs, particularly if hatching eggs that aren't uniform in size.
As for humidity levels and such generally, The surest way to check if your humidity levels are adequate is by weighing some of the eggs before incubating, marking them, and paying attention to the weight loss as the hatch commences. Hygrometers simply leave too much room for error, even wet bulb types. "Gravity" is much more consistent, and a scale is a lot easier to check for accuracy than a thermometer or electronic or filament type hygrometer. A small scale can be checked for accuracy any time you want with relatively new nickels or pennies, as an American Nickel weighs 5 grams and a penny weighs 2.5 grams, give or take only a 100th or so of a gram, plenty accurate enough for monitoring egg weight purposes. A LOT easier than checking hygrometers for accuracy with things like the 'wet salt method' or sending a unit off to be checked and/or recalibrated. Even wet bulb types are subject to the inherent accuracy of the thermometers themselves, how clean or dirty the cloth tube is, etc.
You don't really have to monitor all the eggs this way, but you want to do more than one on the chance that your "monitor egg" stops developing (I.e. "dies") You can buy a decent electronic scale on
ebay for less than ten bucks, including shipping that'll handle the ranges necessary for monitoring eggs. Skip the mechanical "egg scales" some look kinda cool, but they aren't worth the tin they're made of. Also watch out for the "vintage" Jiffy" type egg scales on
ebay . . . . you can still buy those things new, put them outside for a month to "rust up" a little, then sell them to unsuspecting buyers as "vintage." It's truly nuts how many folks fall for that.
