# 16 pearly whites



## Herpetology (Dec 10, 2020)




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## adderboy (Dec 10, 2020)

Congrats. I am an antediluvian and still incubate with vermiculite ?. Good luck.


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## Flaviemys purvisi (Dec 11, 2020)

adderboy said:


> Congrats. I am an antediluvian and still incubate with vermiculite ?. Good luck.


Nothing wrong with that, it's the only way I do it... and I still use 25 watt incandescent party globes as the heat source in my incubators.


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## Sdaji (Dec 11, 2020)

Flaviemys purvisi said:


> Nothing wrong with that, it's the only way I do it... and I still use 25 watt incandescent party globes as the heat source in my incubators.
> View attachment 330335



Wow! It's like I've just logged into 5 years before APS was launched!

It's obviously still doing the job for you, and you're obviously an 'If it ain't broke...' kinda guy! In a way it's nice to see something so old school still being (successfully!) used.


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## Flaviemys purvisi (Dec 11, 2020)

Sdaji said:


> Wow! It's like I've just logged into 5 years before APS was launched!
> 
> It's obviously still doing the job for you, and you're obviously an 'If it ain't broke...' kinda guy! In a way it's nice to see something so old school still being (successfully!) used.


Probably has a lot more to do with my OCD and not being willing to "gamble" turtle eggs on a new method I haven't tried before just so I can say "oh yeah that works too" because if I botched it and lost a season's eggs I'd be pretty p'd at myself. I also stock-piled incandescent globes once they stopped making them and everything went LED. So I'll be incubating turtle eggs this way for several years yet. Lol


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## mrkos (Dec 11, 2020)

I got 16 eggs as well and I didn’t want to breed this year as I wanted to let my female get some more size made the mistake of putting her in the aviary with a male for one night early October after the male had resumed feeding and we had a cold snap that evening it seems the less effort you put in the better the result I almost feel guilty for the people that repeatedly try to breed with bad results
[automerge]1607684561[/automerge]
And mine are cooking happily in semi dry clumping vermiculite in my beer esky which took me ten minutes to set up same setup as last year with 100 percent hatch


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## adderboy (Dec 12, 2020)

Hah. Glad to hear I'm not completely outdated. But gee, incandescent globes.... Really? That's amazing. I stopped using them when I discovered the joys of heat cords, but as Sdaji said, if it ain't broke...
Anyway, good luck.


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## Flaviemys purvisi (Dec 12, 2020)

mrkos said:


> I got 16 eggs as well and I didn’t want to breed this year as I wanted to let my female get some more size made the mistake of putting her in the aviary with a male for one night early October after the male had resumed feeding and we had a cold snap that evening it seems the less effort you put in the better the result I almost feel guilty for the people that repeatedly try to breed with bad results
> [automerge]1607684561[/automerge]
> And mine are cooking happily in semi dry clumping vermiculite in my beer esky which took me ten minutes to set up same setup as last year with 100 percent hatch


Hehe I don't know how it works with snakes (breeding wise) but if I wanted to not breed my turtles this year, I'd of had to separate the males and females back in 2015... A female turtle will store sperm from every one single mating with multiple males and use it to produce viable fertile eggs for the next 4 years... and each individual clutch can be fathered by 5 males... crazy stuff. She can select stored sperm from up to 5 males to fertilise any individual egg in any clutch. A clutch of 5 hatchies can all have different fathers. 

This is why the integrity of freshwater turtle genetics in the wild in Australia is royally screwed thanks to ignorant morons dumping their unwanted pets in waterways far beyond their natural range.


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## Sdaji (Dec 12, 2020)

Flaviemys purvisi said:


> Probably has a lot more to do with my OCD and not being willing to "gamble" turtle eggs on a new method I haven't tried before just so I can say "oh yeah that works too" because if I botched it and lost a season's eggs I'd be pretty p'd at myself. I also stock-piled incandescent globes once they stopped making them and everything went LED. So I'll be incubating turtle eggs this way for several years yet. Lol
> View attachment 330341



...wow

Amazing to think that I've incubated turtle eggs with more different methods than the resident turtle guy here. Just about everything works, they're really easy. Having said that, I've only played with common, cold turtles, not tropical specialists.

I'd suggest upgrading, but hey, I think it's cool that someone is keeping the old methods alive!


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## Flaviemys purvisi (Dec 13, 2020)

Sdaji said:


> Having said that, I've only played with common, cold turtles, not tropical specialists.


Temperate or tropical requires little variation... the true challenge with breeding turtles begins when you start artificially incubating eggs laid by species that require a diapuase period of more than one month with a gradual 1° per day reduction in temperature until the minimum is reached and sustained for a period before being increased by 1° per day until the maximum is reached, while factoring in an incubation temperature hysterisis of 1.5° like say for Macrochelodina expansa (which can take up to 192 days to hatch) or Elseya irwini where if you screw that up, all your eggs will perish... or... they'll hatch severely deformed turtles that will die within hours of hatching. Then you have the northern long neck - Chelodina oblonga, the only species that purposely lays its eggs underwater.

I'm in no hurry to ditch vermiculite & party globes.


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## Ajar5 (Dec 13, 2020)

Flaviemys purvisi said:


> Hehe I don't know how it works with snakes (breeding wise) but if I wanted to not breed my turtles this year, I'd of had to separate the males and females back in 2015... A female turtle will store sperm from every one single mating with multiple males and use it to produce viable fertile eggs for the next 4 years... and each individual clutch can be fathered by 5 males... crazy stuff. She can select stored sperm from up to 5 males to fertilise any individual egg in any clutch. A clutch of 5 hatchies can all have different fathers.
> 
> This is why the integrity of freshwater turtle genetics in the wild in Australia is royally screwed thanks to ignorant morons dumping their unwanted pets in waterways far beyond their natural range.


That's amazing! I'd like to know how someone proved up to 5 father's of a single clutch? Im guessing DNA tests?


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## Flaviemys purvisi (Dec 13, 2020)

Ajar5 said:


> That's amazing! I'd like to know how someone proved up to 5 father's of a single clutch? Im guessing DNA tests?


Yep.


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## Sdaji (Dec 14, 2020)

Flaviemys purvisi said:


> Temperate or tropical requires little variation... the true challenge with breeding turtles begins when you start artificially incubating eggs laid by species that require a diapuase period of more than one month with a gradual 1° per day reduction in temperature until the minimum is reached and sustained for a period before being increased by 1° per day until the maximum is reached, while factoring in an incubation temperature hysterisis of 1.5° like say for Macrochelodina expansa (which can take up to 192 days to hatch) or Elseya irwini where if you screw that up, all your eggs will perish... or... they'll hatch severely deformed turtles that will die within hours of hatching. Then you have the northern long neck - Chelodina oblonga, the only species that purposely lays its eggs underwater.
> 
> I'm in no hurry to ditch vermiculite & party globes.



Sounds like some pretty massive variation in incubation technique to me! I've only incubated the easiest, simplest ones. A wide range of techniques and literally everything has worked. No doubt with the fancy specialist tropical species I'd have lost many eggs with my methods.


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