incubator losing heat at night

[mandymoo]

hi, i'm brand new at the incubating side of things, so please don't laugh at my silly question!

i set my new Brinsea Octo Eco up yesterday morning (about 24hrs ago my time) i got the temp to maintain itself at around 37.5 during the day, and it stayed at that temp

but when i got up this morning, the temp had dropped to around 36.5

obviously i haven't put any eggs in yet, as i wanted to check how the incubator works, and how to maintain the temp, but i am expecting to put some in on tues

so my question is, how can i help keep the incubator temp constant? Bearing in mind i live in the UK and our weather is not brilliant, you never know from one day to the next if it's going to be sunny or pouring down!

it's not possible to run a heater in the spare bedroom where the incubator is set up, so can i wrap a blanket or towel around the bottom half of the incubator, as long as the ventilation hole is clear?

thanks in advance

 

[Alaskan]

Well, you posted this a while back....so I hope you managed to figure something out.....

In case you didn't, here are some thoughts.....

1. The Brinsea has a cool down cycle that it goes through once a day. Does yours have that, was it turned on, and is that why there was the temperature drop?

2. Yes on the blanket or insulation over any parts you can cover. You are correct, in that you don't want to cover any open air vents. It turns out those little eggs have to get oxygen, so the chicks can breathe, so good open vents are important.

3. Some temperature fluctuations are not the end of the world. I just hatched out some chicks, and my incubator was TERRIBLE! It hit over 103 a few times, I think it briefly touched 110!!!! It also plummeted on occasion! It was the worst incubation experience ever! Such stress for me! (I had used this incubator before, I think it just happened to start breaking as soon as I started this batch of eggs). Point being.....I am sure that your lovely Brinsea, even in a room with great temperature fluctuations, will do better than my horrid incubator. My horrid incubator still managed to give me 5 very healthy and live babies out of 18. So, I had just over 25% hatch.

 

[mandymoo]

thanks alaskan

luckily it's stayed around the 36.5/37.5, and it hasn't changed from that (i'm in the UK so our temps in celsius!)

i put some eggs in 5 days ago, so keeping my fingers crossed for a good first hatch with an incubator

 

[Alaskan]

The Brinsea are such good quality, I am sure you will be fine.

. and I knew you were a Brit...I just didn't want to bother with the conversions.

I hope you have good luck with the hatch!