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forcekin
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First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting)
#16157786 - 04/29/12 10:34 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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First of all, wonderful community with tons of helpful information so thanks for that  I decided to take a shot at growing using the pf tek last month and read everything I could on the subject as well as purchased all the necessary supplies. I went with 2x random spore syringes from sporeworks. Here's what I got:

Followed RR's PF Tek, only deviation was the addition of gypsum (1/2 tbsp). Used a steamer pot (shorter perforated pot inside slightly taller pot) for 90 minutes.
The mycellium took nearly 3 weeks to colonize, I birthed them about 5 days after. In retrospect I think I could have waited a little longer to birth, got anxious.
I have had the cakes in my SGFC for exactly 7 days now and am not really seeing anything promising. I had a little guy pop out overnight on one of the cakes last night but it doesn't look very good and has a cracked cap. They look a little bluish, not sure if it's contaminated or not.
I am misting/fanning 4-5x a day, 12/12 light using a 6500k CFL from above. Temps are ranging from 75 to 82 according to the thermometer. My house sucks and fluctuates temps a ton so I put the SGFC in a closet and keep the doors cracked. I have a heater in there on the lowest setting just to keep it warm enough (drops to 65 or lower without it) and a humidifier to compensate for the dry air. I am having trouble keeping the humidity up for some reason.
Birthing:



Fruiting:


Thoughts? Suggestions? Comforting words?
Edited by forcekin (05/01/12 12:44 PM)
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TheDeathryder
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: forcekin]
#16157834 - 04/29/12 10:45 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Everything looks good to me, the blue is likely bruising from being handled. Just keep getting lots of FAE and watch your humidity and they should be fine. Patience is a bitch when your waiting on your babies to start fruiting lol.
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mark6587
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: forcekin]
#16157870 - 04/29/12 10:52 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Bluing is most likely from the cakes being dehydrated. It could also be from rough handling, but you said your having trouble keeping the humidity up so that's the best guess. You could always try re-dunking your cakes and see if that helps. Another thing you could try is getting a sterilized syringe filled with sterile water and injecting water directly into the cakes themselves. You can search around for threads dealing with this but in general people seem to get good results.
If you're having trouble keeping your humidity up in your sgfc you might try taping over some over your holes or stuffing with polyfill. If you do this you may want to try to compensate with more fanning though. Make sure to only cover a few holes at a time so you know when to stop covering them.
Best of luck.
-------------------- The stories and information posted by myself are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything I have posted here as fact.
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dodgem
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: TheDeathryder]
#16157881 - 04/29/12 10:54 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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I would get the bottom of the tub elevated in some way so that air can move through from the bottom up. The air that comes up from the bottom holes through the perlite will bring moisture with it and increase the humidity of the fruiting chamber. And like it was said above, it does seem like you have a lot of holes, almost too many.
Also, next time you dunk and roll, try and using a finer verm to roll with. As you can tell on your cakes there is a lot of open areas where the cerm did not stick. The finer verm will take care of this problem. You can just grind up the verm you have in a food processor.
Everything else is looking pretty good. Low temps at night aren't going to hurt it too much, so as long as it is ~75 all during the day it should be fine without the heater (that could also be causing the low humidity.
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inserttoehere
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: forcekin]
#16157888 - 04/29/12 10:55 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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I agree with TheDeathryder. Everything looks great so far. That first popper you have is nothing to worry about. Sometimes it can take a couple weeks for things to blossom. As Yoda says (or was it Qui-gon), "Patience young padawan!"
Happy shrooming!
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forcekin
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: inserttoehere]
#16157961 - 04/29/12 11:14 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Thanks for the quick responses!
I do have the SGFC elevated about 3-4" on some books, if you look here and here you can kinda see it.
I will definitely wait a little longer before taking any "drastic" measures like injecting sterile water, but for now I took the top cover off, turned the heat down a little and aimed the humidifier so it's basically just "dumping" humid vapor over the FC. Temps are ~72 but the thermometer is near the top of the FC, I'm guessing it's considerably warmer near the perlite since the heater is underneath the shelf that it's resting on. I'm also going to re-soak the perlite since the heater probably caused accelerated evaporation. Any guidelines I need to follow when handling the cakes at this stage? Sterile gloves?
I actually thought about grinding the verm but ended up deciding against it. I figured the medium grade would be better for the BRF/Verm substrate since it would allow for a "looser" cake, something RR mentioned was beneficial in his video.
Again, thanks a lot and I'll keep posting updates in the thread.
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dodgem
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: forcekin]
#16157985 - 04/29/12 11:23 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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I agree the medium grade verm is better for the cake itself, but when rolling you could just grind up what you need for that part.
And yea those books work. I thought it was just sitting flat on the books all the way across, my b.
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TheDeathryder
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: dodgem]
#16158118 - 04/30/12 12:08 AM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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What variety of spores are you using? I post from my phone and can't see your syringe label well. I hope you get several good flushes and post lots of pin porn for the rest of us shroomerites.
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savant
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: TheDeathryder]
#16158191 - 04/30/12 12:24 AM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
TheDeathryder said: What variety of spores are you using? I post from my phone and can't see your syringe label well. I hope you get several good flushes and post lots of pin porn for the rest of us shroomerites.
The label said south American,
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TheDeathryder
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: savant]
#16158232 - 04/30/12 12:35 AM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Thank you, I hate this phone, can't wait to have internet on my computer again so I can read the small print.
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LeopardMan
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: forcekin]
#16158938 - 04/30/12 06:33 AM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
forcekin said: I am having trouble keeping the humidity up for some reason.
The reason is the heater. Turn it off. Heating directly your FC will lower your RH. 65F is perfectly alright for fruiting, it's just a little bit slower. Also turn off the humidifier. A SGFC built per the tek will keep your cakes at 95%+ RH.
(Also, you didn't use LCs but spore syringes).
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-Charles Bukowski-
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forcekin
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: forcekin]
#16173959 - 05/02/12 09:39 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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It's been 3 days since I made the changes, so 10 days since putting them in the FC. The humidifier cranked up + top off seems to have brought them back to life but they were getting too wet so I've since taped off a majority of the holes on the side walls and left only the ones near the top of the perlite for CO2 exchange, a few in the top lid and left the holes in the bottom untouched. 6500k CFL is only on for 1 hour in the morning.
The little cracked guy from earlier grew quite a bit with the added humidity, ended up with this:

Seems to have stopped growing, should I just pull it off and chuck it?
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LeopardMan
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: forcekin]
#16175252 - 05/03/12 03:31 AM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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You are a stubborn guy I told you to turn off the humidifier. You don't want to tape holes in a SGFC. You made too many mistakes, I am sorry. Just let that fruit grow a little bit more, then pick it. Next time follow the tek. A SGFC doesn't need heaters nor humidifiers.
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You have to die a few times before you can really live.
-Charles Bukowski-
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forcekin
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: LeopardMan]
#16175603 - 05/03/12 07:17 AM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
LeopardMan said: You are a stubborn guy I told you to turn off the humidifier. You don't want to tape holes in a SGFC. You made too many mistakes, I am sorry. Just let that fruit grow a little bit more, then pick it. Next time follow the tek. A SGFC doesn't need heaters nor humidifiers.
I had to tape up the holes because I drilled more than the Tek called for, as evidenced by the lack of any kind of humidity within a couple hours of turning the humidifier off. If you think I can fruit with ~40% humidity then everything I've read has been wrong. This is with the heater off. So temps are considerably lower, humidity is now up and I'm seeing more pinning as of this morning. It's my first grow, I'm willing to learn from my mistakes, no harm done I feel like I'm going in the right direction now and my next batch will do much better. Thanks for the tips!
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forcekin
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: forcekin]
#16176613 - 05/03/12 01:20 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Getting quite a bit of pinning on the underside of one of the cakes, they're actually bruising from the weight of the cake. Is it ok to flip them in a situation like this?
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dodgem
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: forcekin]
#16178766 - 05/03/12 08:54 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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You can if you want. I ussualy get at least 50% of my pins on the bottoms of my cakes, as that is where the humidity will most likely be the highest. I usually keep mine like that, they still grow just fine. There is a reason they are at the bottom.
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forcekin
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: dodgem]
#16179673 - 05/03/12 11:39 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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I did go ahead and flip that one cake just to see what happens. I have other cakes pinning at the bottom now too (to compare to), since I'm still very new at this I decided to go for it and observe the results. So far so good, got some nice clusters coming up and they're looking very healthy
Edited by forcekin (05/03/12 11:40 PM)
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otaku on shrooms
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: forcekin]
#16183050 - 05/04/12 07:09 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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ok most people like the shottys, ive never had luck with them i live in a very dry state. i use a air pump that pushs air into a jar with a sponge and water it takes care of humitidy and fae for me. id suggest giving that a go if you cant aford an electric air pum a hand or foot one will work as long as its attached to the tubing properly.
-------------------- im not r kelly i do not create evidence, and my experments are purely theoretical i refuse to post pics of any grows so ethier take my words at face value or simply choose to think what you already do. please note its my experiance that i dont think like others so please be patiant when i have to explain something it may make no sense to you but it does to me
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forcekin
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Re: First time pftek -- need some input (fruiting) [Re: forcekin]
#16185773 - 05/05/12 11:47 AM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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So it's been a few days, I've made some changes as can be read throughout the thread. Definitely made some mistakes with this first batch as I tried to dial in humidity and temps, certainly glad I went with only 4 cakes to learn on. I have 8 more at nearly 100% colonization @ a steady 80F using a "heatbomb" consisting of a 75W aquarium heater siliconed into a water bottle and placed with the jars in a cardboard box. They are colonizing at least 5 days faster than these ecuador cakes, though I imagine it's due to the elevated temps (Ecuadors were usually 70-75F tops during their incubation, no heatbomb).
Anyway, enough rambling. Time for some mediocre myco porn!
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