Vickie, Are you wetting the vermiculite for Chinese box and star tortoises? I’ve found that the Chinese box will die if too wet. My flavos lay all their eggs in an outdoor pen in a spot where the soil is bone-dry. Bill McCord told me that he incubates his eggs with only moisture in the air in the incubator. Are most of your flavo eggs hatching? -Rick Rick, I had been using vermiculite for the first 2 years I incubated dbt eggs but felt that they were drying out too much so I switched this year just to see how it worked. I mixed 1 to 1 with equal water by weight and buryed the eggs half way. Then I covered the container with a lid with a few tiny holes in it. I only opened it briefly every couple of weeks and I had no denting until just days before they hatched. No other water was added. I tried this also with my Chinese eggs and it did not work. Fairly early on I could see air bubbles forming so I switched these eggs back to vermiculite. I will only use perlite now with my dbts and Pancakes as it also worked well for those. Chinese and Stars in vermiculite. Vickie modelgrafx@… wrote: