Water question.

[45pro]

In my incubator instructions is says to add 100ml of water and check it every other day. There obviously enough room for 500ml or so of water. Do any of you fill it up and not have to worry about it or is the directions to be followed to the T?
This the incubator I have

 

[Percheron chick]

Probably shouldn't. I am not familiar with your incubator but humidity is a function of temp and surface area of the water. Typically you have one chamber that is the correct amount of surface area/evaporation for incubation and a second for the hatching stage to raise the humidity. Does it have a sensor to measure humidity? If it does, play around with the amount of water and see if things fluctuate

 

[45pro]

The surface area would be the same, just deeper water. It does have a humidity setting which I believe it regulates on its own.

 

[Altfrizzle]

I believe that covering the bottom with water and keeping it that way would be too high incubation humidity.

I have this incubator and bought an Incuview after a while because managing humidity in it was too tricky.

If I was going to use it again I’d determine what size container I could put in the bottom to fill and get desired incubation humidity.

I tried dry incubation (aiming for 40% or so) and has disastrous hatches.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Could you possibly contact the manufacturer and ask them why? And tell us what they say.

Personally that makes no sense to me as water depth has nothing to do with humidity as long as surface area is the same, just how long the water lasts before it runs dry. I agree with Percheron, surface area and temperature control how much water evaporates. But maybe since it somehow regulates the humidity automatically it has something to do with the instrumentation.

If the goal is to maintain a constant level in there, adding a certain amount on a strict schedule may not be what you need to do. If evaporation is not what they expect, and that can happen, the level may go up or down depending in how much actually evaporates.

I would be very reluctant to go against the directions without understanding why that comment is there.