This is such a helpful description of what I’m seeing. I’m glad to know it can go down and isn’t some kind of abnormality. Is it common for them to be quite slow at first? All my other hatchlings have been perky and mobile. The sluggishness seems concerning to me.
The yolk stalk is off today, and I put a little Neosporin (original—no added pain relievers) on the belly. Now I switch to dry paper towels, and normal enclosure items, right?
All of Goldie’s hatchlings are out! All this time I thought Smokey was a SK diffused ghost, 50% caramel, ph stripe…but it appears he is homozygous caramel as well. He is the dad of all but two babies (motley or stripe gives them away) and every single one looks amber. Surprise!
The only living hatchling of Arctic’s is an AMEL! I think it’s an amber opal (or amel amaretto if you prefer), but I suppose it’s possible that it’s a butter? I knew Arctic was 66% het amel, but I didn’t know that Goldie carried the het, too. I am very, very happy about this.
I am simultaneously a little nervous to get my hopes up that we can keep this one, though, because it’s the only baby that didn’t absorb the yolk. One egg still definitely had a yolk sac in it. While I can’t be 100% sure it’s the surprise opal amaretto’s egg, its extra small size compared to clutch mates seems to indicate that it is the one that didn’t get his last nutrients.
Would you have thought Smokey was homozygous caramel ghost? I figured he was het because he has green eyes, but I feel a little foolish I didn’t recognize it before. He does have a lot of yellow, but not an astronomical amount for an anery:
That’s a nice bucket of babies! I love Caramel, so that’s a welcome surprise. 
I would not have visually ID’d homo Caramel. So pretty!
Thanks, @deanaii. Glad I’m not the only who wouldn’t have ID’d it. The fact that the seller marked him at 50% het caramel instead of 66% means he didn’t know the other parent was carrying het caramel either, so nobody knew to even look for it until just now. Haha.
I’m not sure about sluggishness generally for babies who are dealing with this issue. My memory’s impression is yes, to some degree. I do keep them confined in a deli at least until they have lost the yolk stalk. Seems like the ones who got that far do pull through and do fine.
Yes, now you switch to dry paper towels and normal items. Fingers crossed for this little one.
I wouldn’t have necessarily pegged Smokey as homozygous Caramel either. It’s still possible that he’s het and the clutch just hit crazy odds, but he’s probably homozygous. He’s a handsome fellow.
Any updates on the babies?
Yes!!! Updates coming. I just have three kids coming and going from camps and a family trip back home. I’m on the road now, too, but I got pics of them all and set up in their little individual bins before I left.
The bottom line is that Goldie’s clutch had one DOA (as you know), two that didn’t absorb their yolks, and four that needed extra care while they dropped their yolk stalks.
Luna’s clutch only had one with a yolk stalk, and the baby dropped it the same day.
In chatting with @deanaii privately, he mentioned maybe the water used in the substrate may be playing a role. We have a chlorine filter for the whole house, but a more expensive filter for the fridge water. My son used fridge water for Luna’s clutch, and, in a hurry I had used his bathroom sink water for Goldie’s. Last year, we used bathroom sink water for all the bins. So…maybe we’ve found a culprit. At any rate, I’m using spring water from a bottle next year.
For now, hopefully the nicer fridge water filter will help at least Luna’s clutch eat better.
Here are photos of Goldie’s clutch:
Such cuties. All Amber Motleys from their dad Smokey, with just 3 little Amber Stripes. Each is guaranteed het stripe from mom, and het diffused, sunkissed, anery from dad. Each is also 50% lavender, amel; ph pied,
I adore my little surprise amel, whose dad is Arctic. This one is a hypo, amel, caramel, lavender (amel amaretto?), 100% het diffused, stripe:
Only 4.44 g, but he’s very energetic and curious, so I’m letting myself get my hopes up
Gotta tuck kids in for a long drive tomorrow, so I’ll post Luna’s clutch photos tomorrow.
Oh my god… I never considered that as a problem with incubating clutches but that might actually be a very good point. I think that may have contributed to my BP clutch issues too because iirc I had used tap water for my recent clutch without thinking about it.
For my aquatics I have to use remineralized RO water because even our filtered city source tap water still contains high amounts of ammonia (1-2ppm) and Nitrites (~.25ppm) along with God knows what else. I did a Google search that shows that ammonia can be highly toxic to developing embryos in eggs through shell absorption… 
I don’t know why I never thought of that being an issue…
Yeah I am usually careful to use the super filtered fridge water for everything snake related, but why I didn’t think to use it on the eggs is beyond me. Thank @deanii for his excellent sleuthing. I knew I had to be doing SOMETHING wrong to be hitting such terrible health odds on these clutches. Hopefully changing this will fix the issues I’ve been having.
Luna’s clutch was just delightful. There is so much variety, and great odds for all my hoped-for morphs, I can’t stop smiling.
Her clutch proves HiJack to be NOT super tessera (unless two eggs were fertilized from Speck from last year). Her ghost babies were these:
We hit great odd with a het stripe to het stripe pairing again. Two tessera stripes, two tessera motleys, one cube stripe, and one motley. Most will be RF if it’s anything like last year. All babies are ph amel, lava from dad.
Arctic’s and Luna’s babies are these:
They produced 5 hypos and 7 hypo lavenders (all 100% het lavender (for non-visuals), anery, diffused, and motley OR stripe, 50% het amel)
Some of the photos are not uploading so I’ll have to figure out which ones are missing after I’m done traveling 
Gotta get back to driving now
I love those Ambers, especially the Stripes!
I still use tap water to moisten incubation media. I’ll probably switch to purified myself, but only to eliminate a variable. I’m not sure if I’ve convinced myself that it has contributed to issues.
Yeah, even if it doesn’t work, it is easy and cheap to eliminate that variable. Definitely worth it! Maybe you live in an area with clean well or tap water.
We’ll see if Luna’s clutch are better eaters this year. If they are, it’s definitely the water.
That’s my thinking too. It’s easy enough to do, so why not? My water is city water with all the expected junk in it.
I love the Amber Stripes, too. They should look just like Mama Goldie when they grow up. I was a little sad the odds weren’t with us for more stripes, but I’m fascinated by the variety in the motleys. With only one motley allele in the mix (dad is motley-stripe and mom is visual stripe), I’m amazed at how different all the babies are. Some have predictable spine dots, losing expression about 1/3 of the way down the body. Others have large patterns “blooping” (if that isn’t a word, it should be) off and on all the way to the tail. It really does convince me there’s more to that pair of alleles than simple Mandelian biology. The motley allele alone can’t just be 100% dominant over stripe. I wonder if there’s some kind of polygenetic component that affects expression of each allele.
