Notahacker420 said:

but there are so many conflicting answers it's unreal.

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listerine said:

It may or may not possess usable nutrients, but until further studies are conducted, it is best to discount it as a nutrient source and to seek nutrient elsewhere.

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FooMan said:

It's been discussed before: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/9624996#9624996

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cloudpersona said:

Easy way to figure this out. Wide mouth quart jar with just verm, innoc, and birth it. If it truly is inert you'll get no fruits.

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Notahacker420 said:

Very true, and I think I will be trying this, if it colonized then it wouldn't be inert.

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Do it for

WillSolvem said:

I'm knocking up a few verm cakes now, nothing but field capacity verm, I'll be using filter discs for the filter, 3 will be sterilizered in aPC, 3 will be steam sterilized, 3 will be pasteurized, and 3 will not be heat treated in anyway, lets see what happens, I won't hold your breath though

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WillSolvem said:

Your seeing aerial mycelium reaching through the verm to reach fresh air above

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RogerRabbit said:

There's just over three tablespoons of brown rice flour in a 1/2 pint pf cake, yet it can be completely covered with mushrooms.  Do you really think brown rice is that nutritious?  If so, try replacing the verm with rockwool which holds exactly as much water and air as verm and see what happens.

In addition, I've seen pf cakes shrink to no more than ten to fifteen percent of their original size after five or six flushes.  Since verm is nearly 2/3 of the cake, where did all that verm go if it wasn't consumed by the mycelium? 

Furthermore, who says verm doesn't contain any fungal food, and what leads people to think that carbohydrates, lipids or proteins are all fungi eats, just because it's written in a book somewhere?  I can show you a very popular book that says people lived with dinosaurs, the earth is only 6,000 years old, and some dude walked on water and raised folks from the dead.  Just because something is written in a book doesn't make it so.

Direct observation and being willing to accept what one sees with his own eyes rather than the conventional wisdom is how science grows.  Never be afraid to challenge the prevailing doctrines of the day.
RR

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RogerRabbit said:

In addition, I've seen pf cakes shrink to no more than ten to fifteen percent of their original size after five or six flushes.  Since verm is nearly 2/3 of the cake, where did all that verm go.. 

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RogerRabbit said:

There's just over three tablespoons of brown rice flour in a 1/2 pint pf cake, yet it can be completely covered with mushrooms.  Do you really think brown rice is that nutritious?  If so, try replacing the verm with rockwool which holds exactly as much water and air as verm and see what happens.

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I have actually, well kind of, when I first started in my state vermiculite was illegal (?) to sell because of its "amount of carcinogens.. anyway I substituted perlite for verm in the 2-1-1 and had the same yields as cakes with verm (currently legal and sold everywhere). Funny note about using perlite in cakes; in a pinch I ran out of brown rice and threw white rice in the coffee grinder and used it, never do this! I could barely tell if it was colonizing, ending up going invitro before I birthed it

Amanita virosa said:

Notahacker420 said:

Ok....

Properties of Vermiculite

Vermiculite is a mined mineral with certain properties that make it useful for gardeners. The mineral, after being treated, is often added to potting soil, though the process that transforms it into a useful soil additive also makes vermiculite expensive. Another potential downside is that the vermiculite could be mined from a place containing asbestos. Thus, make sure to use a mask when handling vermiculite. Also look for packaging stating the vermiculite contains no asbestos and no products taken from mines containing asbestos.

Nutrients
The inherent nutritional properties of vermiculite are somewhat mild. The vermiculite might provide some potassium (K), magnesium (Mg) and trace minerals. However, the moisture-retaining qualities of vermiculite mean that nutrients dissolved in the water are also retained by vermiculite instead of draining away.

http://www.gardenguides.com/101377-properties-vermiculite.html

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Last I checked garden guides . Com was not a peer reviewed scientific journal  To answer your previous question the reason we keep the verm layer dry is because water forms hydrogen bonds that can wick bacteria thru to the nutritive layer. Do a simple experiment if you are so curious about whether Verm is nutritive or not. Take some verm. Hydrate it as you would BRF  Sterlilize it and shoot as many spores into it as you like.  Get back to me when the jars are colonized with mycelium. Just because a fungus can digest something does not make that "something" a frigging nutrient. Cubes eat aluminum.  Is it a nutrient?
And now a tip since this is supposed to be the tip line.
Folks are always questioning whether they have bacterial contam and there is an easy way to check. Shake shit out of the jars. This will always favor the unicellular bacteria over the filamentous fungi. If the jars fail to quickly recolonized, they are likely contaminated with bacteria. The exception is reis.hi which does not care about bacteria in the least. In fact it seems to prefer bacterial contaminated grain.

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