Second clutch of Ackie eggs, and these should be fertile.

[E.Shell]

My female Ackie Monitor, Ralph, deposited another clutch of eggs yesterday evening or early this morning.

A clutch of ten this time, deposited 17 days after her exposure to the new male and a full afternoon of copulation.

She was digging around more than usual the last few days, and yesterday evening she was laying with just her head out of the burrow. This morning, the burrow was sealed off and this afternoon when I got home from work, I could see she was thin-looking, so I figured it was time to dig.

The burrow starts under a log, and went in about 35-40 cm at a 30 degree angle before turning sharply down. The eggs were laid and covered, and the tunnel went past and over the back-filled eggs, another 20-25 cm to a cavity about 15 cm in diameter.

I carefully dug them out and put them in the incubator at 86oF/30oC. The waiting begins... First week of October?

 

[user 43767]

My female Ackie Monitor, Ralph, deposited another clutch of eggs yesterday evening or early this morning.

A clutch of ten this time, deposited 17 days after her exposure to the new male and a full afternoon of copulation.

She was digging around more than usual the last few days, and yesterday evening she was laying with just her head out of the burrow. This morning, the burrow was sealed off and this afternoon when I got home from work, I could see she was thin-looking, so I figured it was time to dig.

The burrow starts under a log, and went in about 35-40 cm at a 30 degree angle before turning sharply down. The eggs were laid and covered, and the tunnel went past and over the back-filled eggs, another 20-25 cm to a cavity about 15 cm in diameter.

I carefully dug them out and put them in the incubator at 86oF/30oC. The waiting begins... First week of October?

Incubation time will obviously depend on incubator conditions, 30c is a decent temp, it`s known that slightly lower temps (longer incubation times) usually produce larger more robust hatchling with the yolk sac fully absorbed. Good luck with them, keep us posted. Hopefully the time will fly by and you don`t get too stressed by the wait!

 

[E.Shell]

Thank you again for your helpful advice, murrindindi!

I have dropped the temperature down to 28oC. I'm eager to see new babies, but I'd happily wait a little longer for their benefit.

 

[user 43767]

Thank you again for your helpful advice, murrindindi!

I have dropped the temperature down to 28oC. I'm eager to see new babies, but I'd happily wait a little longer for their benefit.

I would try 29c, also to answer your other question, the SIM incubation containers are excellent, very easy to use.

 

[E.Shell]

Thank you murrindindi!

I have reset the incubator temperature to 29oC and will ride it out.

I am going to make a few of my own suspension containers then. I'm going try to tailor them to my shelf size, so that I can get two on the shelf with an air space all around. If the actual SIMS were a better size with respect to my available shelf space, I'd probably just buy a couple, but the small ones waste a lot of space and the large ones are too large to fit.

ETA: Made some containers, started a thread in the DIY section.
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21 Day update (7-21-21): Candled the eggs today and I am pleased to report that I can see blood vessels in all of them. So far, so good. ?
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32 days in, (8-1-21) candled the eggs again, all ten still good.