Help needed by Newbie - Incubator Issue!

[ChickieLah]

Hello all

I've recently found this forum and now need your help/advise please.

My friends has let me borrow her Rcom 20 incubator after I lost all my eggs in one that I purchased and it stopped working after just three days.

My problem is that my eggs are at day eleven and the humidity has shot up on the machine. The temperature stays at 37.5 and the humidity was staying at 45 until today when it's short up to 73!

I'm really worried I will loose the eggs and I cannot bring the humidity down. I'm unable to get hold of my friend so I'm hoping someone may be able to advise on here please?

 

[FenDruadin]

First of all, don't panic! High humidity won't hurt them if it's just for a few days--during the main incubation period, it's the average humidity that matters, not the moment-by-moment humidity. They're probably just fine.

But, you do need to bring it down as soon as you can. What are the sources of water inside the incubator? Your first step is going to be to open up the bator and take out most of the sources of water. Leave it open for half a minute to a minute (or a little longer is fine too) to let some of the humidity escape.

Close it back, and monitor for a few hours. After it stabilizes, add or remove water until it reaches the level you want it at.

One more thing, though--make sure your hygrometer is measuring accurately! If water got inside the workings of it, it may be registering a much higher humidity than actually exists inside your incubator. At 73%, you will have condensation inside your windows, most likely. Is that the case? If not, you may not have a humidity problem--you may have a hygrometer problem!

You can calibrate your hygrometer but it takes 12 hours, so try this instead--take the hygrometer out of the incubator for an hour and place it away from immediate sources of humidity, preferably outside but not near any water. Take a reading, then go online to a weather information site and look up the current relative humidity for your area. If the hygrometer is off by a LOT (like 10% or more), then you have a hygrometer issue. If it's pretty close, then you either have a humidity problem OR your hygrometer has had time to dry out and will now read accurately--put it back in the bator and see what is what.

Good luck, and keep posting here--lots of helpful folks!

 

[ChickieLah]

Thanks Iamcuriositycat

The incubator is an Rcom 20 and does all the measurements itself including taking however much water it needs.

I've cleaned the sensor things in the water area, but still no luck.

Should I just empty all the water for now??

 

[FenDruadin]

Oh dear--I've never used anything so fancy, lol, so I really don't know. Even with cleaning the sensor it could be wrong, but you'd get better advice from someone familiar with your incubator. Try changing your subject heading to include the word "RCom" in it, to attract folks with experience. Sorry I'm not more help!

 

[Debbi]

Can you check to see how high your friend had the humdity set? There should be a "high and low" reading in the digital. Could it be the friend had set it to 70% for the lockdown, and you need to adjust the digital settings? Maybe you could call the company that makes them to find out how to do this? See if there is some kind of recall setting for the humidity. Good luck!

 

[geosheets]

you may already have this but here's the manual on how to adjust the settings

http://www.brinsea.com/pdffiles/RCOM for ftp/Rcom20/Rcom20_Manual(10_18).pdf