|
 jlocke85
Stranger
Registered: 12/05/05
Posts: 113
Loc: MI
Last seen: 5 years, 8 days
|
 Colonized petri dish storage? 
#6353440 - 12/10/06 10:49 AM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
I have over a dozen petri dishes of P. ostreatus and I don't really have the capabilities of using all of them right now. I was wondering if you can refrigerate them for awhile, and if so for how long. I plan on buying some test tubes eventually for storage, but this is my first (so far) successful agar attempt. Thanks.
|
Hotnuts
old hand
Registered: 02/26/05
Posts: 3,434
Loc: Wild Blue Yawnder
Last seen: 8 days, 6 hours
|
Re: Colonized petri dish storage? [Re: jlocke85]
#6353460 - 12/10/06 11:04 AM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
I neatly wrap 2 dishes stacked together in foil (if they're the same cultures, from around the same time) and then mark what they are along with dates with a Sharpie marker. If you've got 1 culture of something, individually wrap them of course. Wrapping them in foil helps prevent condensing in the plates some. I've got numerous plates in the fridge that still look nice and it's been several months since some of them have been in there. Some of them for over well a year now. You'll have to check on them occasionally to see how they're doing of course.
Edited by Hotnuts (12/10/06 11:05 AM)
|
jlocke85
Stranger
Registered: 12/05/05
Posts: 113
Loc: MI
Last seen: 5 years, 8 days
|
Re: Colonized petri dish storage? [Re: Hotnuts]
#6353475 - 12/10/06 11:13 AM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Cool, I imagined it'd be fine. I wouldn't have thought of the tin foil part. They already have condensation on them, I have to drain it off first. I might use a few of them at most right now, but even if I had room in the incubator, I only have about 10 quart jars right now (and 6 half gallons but those aren't being broken out yet).
|
Hotnuts
old hand
Registered: 02/26/05
Posts: 3,434
Loc: Wild Blue Yawnder
Last seen: 8 days, 6 hours
|
Re: Colonized petri dish storage? [Re: jlocke85]
#6353499 - 12/10/06 11:31 AM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
If you stack the dishes on top of one another and then wrap them in a clean towel, put them in temperatures around 80 degrees for a day or 2, the condenstion will disappear in about a day or 2 if it's not too heavy. This way your agar absorbs the condensation and gives you more shelf life for storage. Then immediately do as I described above for storing them so the condensation doesn't immediately come back.
Edited by Hotnuts (12/10/06 11:33 AM)
|
RogerRabbit
Bans for Pleasure
Registered: 03/26/03
Posts: 39,269
Loc: USA Mountain Northwest
Last seen: 5 days, 15 hours
|
Re: Colonized petri dish storage? [Re: Hotnuts]
#6353575 - 12/10/06 12:06 PM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Also, be sure to store them in the refrigerator right side up. If you turn them upside down, the moisture will fall to the lid, drying out the culture above, killing it.
RR
--------------------
Download Let's Grow Mushrooms
semper in excretia sumus solim profundum variat
|
mattymonkey
Feel Like aStranger...
Registered: 11/07/04
Posts: 973
Last seen: 4 months, 10 days
|
Re: Colonized petri dish storage? [Re: RogerRabbit]
#6354071 - 12/10/06 03:10 PM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
i just read the exact opposite RogerRabbit, over at Mushworld. People in Asia are storing their cultures upside down so that the condensation does not buildup on the myc.. I have never had a problem with it myself but people are doing it that way.
--------------------
"listening for the secret.. searching for the sound.."
|
Hotnuts
old hand
Registered: 02/26/05
Posts: 3,434
Loc: Wild Blue Yawnder
Last seen: 8 days, 6 hours
|
Re: Colonized petri dish storage? [Re: mattymonkey]
#6354103 - 12/10/06 03:22 PM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
There's always been something about storing them upside down that's bothered me. You can always store them sideways and just meet in the middle. lol. Storing them sideways, wrapped in foil, will x-nay condensing all together for the most part.
|
jlocke85
Stranger
Registered: 12/05/05
Posts: 113
Loc: MI
Last seen: 5 years, 8 days
|
Re: Colonized petri dish storage? [Re: Hotnuts]
#6355293 - 12/10/06 08:44 PM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Thanks all for the advice. I have ten of them wrapped with tin foil in pairs in the fridge right now. I have another four still in the incubator, one of which isn't fully colonized yet. I'll probably have to store most of those, too. I'm about to fire up the pressure cooker soon, but only had enough wild bird seed for maybe 4-5 quart jars. I have a can of wheat berries that is years old (recently opened) that I could use, but the time I tried that I screwed it up with getting the moisture right. Although I do have a gram scale now if I really wanted to get things exact.
|
RogerRabbit
Bans for Pleasure
Registered: 03/26/03
Posts: 39,269
Loc: USA Mountain Northwest
Last seen: 5 days, 15 hours
|
Re: Colonized petri dish storage? [Re: jlocke85]
#6355456 - 12/10/06 09:45 PM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
I've read of people turning them upside down for thirty years. They were wrong then and they're still wrong. Laying them on their side does the same thing. The fact is, cold material can hold less moisture than warm material. As the refrigerator goes through its cycles, the temperature changes a few degrees each time. With these cycles, if your dishes are upside down, more condensation drips to the lid. It can't re-absorb into the agar on the up cycle, because it's now on the lid which is the bottom. Within a month or two, you have a dried out agar disk on top, and a pool of water on bottom.
Leave jars right side up and you have none of these problems as long as you have the dishes wrapped up. Even unwrapped, store right side up. I knew someone would come along to repeat the store upside down mistake, so I got the correct method in first. Mushworld is wrong with that advice. I should shoot a picture of my lab refrigerator. There's nearly 100 petri dishes in there, all right side up, and not a bit of condensation buildup on any of them. Most are unwrapped.
RR
--------------------
Download Let's Grow Mushrooms
semper in excretia sumus solim profundum variat
|
FreeSporePrints
Mycelium Jedi
Registered: 03/06/05
Posts: 1,130
Loc: Rome, ITALY
Last seen: 10 months, 11 days
|
Re: Colonized petri dish storage? [Re: RogerRabbit]
#6356850 - 12/11/06 07:49 AM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
A thing is turn upside down the petris to prevent contaminations when they are "blanks" (you won't to make media every time you need a petri!)
A thing is keep them in the right side to prevent the drying!
And another thing is the use that you've to make of those petris!!
Not all the cultures need moisture, for example a lot of the cultures in the microbiology.In fact they pick the upside down petris from the fridge and put them, updide down, opened a bit, into little ovens at 35-37°C for 2 hours about to drain them.
But we grow muchrooms and the method that RR suggest work perfectly.
RR: how much agar do you add and how much water for your media generally?
--------------------
|
RogerRabbit
Bans for Pleasure
Registered: 03/26/03
Posts: 39,269
Loc: USA Mountain Northwest
Last seen: 5 days, 15 hours
|
|
Agar=20grams/liter
--------------------
Download Let's Grow Mushrooms
semper in excretia sumus solim profundum variat
|
 Corporal Kielbasa
aka shiek
Registered: 05/29/04
Posts: 14,870
Loc: urmomsroom
|
Re: Colonized petri dish storage? [Re: RogerRabbit]
#6357248 - 12/11/06 12:03 PM (6 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
You guys ever notice a armpit smell? Coming from cultures that have been in cold storage for some time...
--------------------
Wanted:
Pleurotus eryngii
Pleurotus cystidiosus
Tricholoma conglobatum
Agrocybe aegerita
Flammulina velutipes
Volvariella volvacea
Sparassis crispa
|
|
Images only 
Threaded
Previous
Index
Next
Shop for: 
Edit 
Reply 
