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Tankie_J said:
Left, I noticed that too and just added water till I thought it looked good.

On another note, I cut the recipe in half and put to 4T unicorn bags. That amount filled 3 bags at around 435g each wet. Just in case anyone wanted that info.

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During pre-pin, it's best to cycle humidity. I will set my humidity controller to a range around 90-98%. This means the fog
will kick on at 90% and will shut off when it hits 98%. While on, moisture is being added and humidity will increase.
While off, humidity drops and evaporation will increase. This on/off cycle takes some amount of time, which is why
some cultivators use a repeat cycle timer in lieu of a controller. Both can work well.

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Thank you for the tek!  I would like to try your method of using a humidity controller to regulate humidity within a tub.  I'm having some issues with my house becoming too humid and it would be very helpful to contain the humidity and heat in a tub.  I'm thinking I'll plan on using the simple inkbird humidity controller to regulate a humidifier ducted into the tub but one of the issues I foresee is the humidity sensor may exceed it's operating limits either by vapor flowing over it or the vapor building up in the container and taking a while to reach the sensor but eventually overwhelming it.  Do you think this would be a problem resulting in improper humidity reads or damaging the sensor itself?  One idea is to put in a small computer fan to promote circulation that turns on with the humidifier.  But this comes with its own set of problems, particularly if trich develops and the spores go everywhere.  What do you think?  Here's a simple schematic of what I'm envisioning.



Update: Did a bit more looking into it and found a forum on a site specializing in sensors that talks about this very issue.  Here's the inquiry:

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Hello, I operate a mushroom farm and have been have a problem with this, the fruiting room (where mushrooms actually grow) has to be kept at very high humidity at all times. It must also stay cold, typically about 98% RH and 15°C. I have a system they produces humidity by atomizing particles of water with ultra sonic disks to increase the humidity without increasing temperature.

Recently I’ve been having a problem where the sensor that sends a reading to the control module hits 100% very fast, it’s set to shut off at 98% but even after shut off the sensor reading continues to rise. I sent the shut off RH to 94% and still continued all th way up to 100% within about 2 minutes. Could this be due to the fast that the sensor is exposed to such high humidity and low temperatures so often and needs to be replaced? I have noticed there is a blue build up on a couple of the electronic components on the board inside. I am assuming it’s copper sulphate caused by the water content on the copper terminals.

Should I be looking to get a new sensor or could this just be related to th fast that I have a much higher airflow fan now?

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Good afternoon Nicholas,

Since this is not a typical commercial HVAC application, I spoke with Dennis at Vaisala, and he recommend using a heated probe like the Vaisala HMP155 for mushroom farming because it’s an aggressive, moist environment

If they are not using a heated probe, moisture will form on the probe / element and causing problems with corrosion, and the sensor, itself, will lose resolution, especially at higher relative RH’s (95-100%). The element would become saturated and “just read 100%”

Click here for a link to the data sheet for these Vaisala devices. It is a configured part and can be ordered with a 0-10 VDC output, and per Vaisala, would be the most economical solution. We don’t carry this product but can order it for you. If you are interested in learning more about this, please give our sales or technical department a call at 877.826.9045.

Thank you!
Kele Inc

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3- inoculate with spores, liquid culture, agar wedge or slurry
I like to shoot these containers with 6 cc of mycelium water. This way
the containers are completely colonized within 15 days and ready to fruit.

For mycelium water, shoot 6 ccs of sterile water onto an agar plate, mix up
the mycelium and water using the needle tip, and draw back into the syringe.
No need to dig into the agar layer, just wipe the myc. off the surface of the agar.
(Note, when starting with spores, try adding more BRF to the recipe.)

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When each grain jar had lid opened, and an agar wedge inserted in front of flow hood, the growth took off in just a couple of days. In 15 days all 5 jars were completely grown out with mycelium, I shook the jars every 5 days and this really speeded things up.

I already had several 3 lb bags of pre-pasteurized mix of horse manure, vermic, water, coir, wheat straw which I cut open and emptied each 3lb bag into 1 mycobag in front of flow hood.

I then sterilized both 3 lb bags in the pc for 1 hour at 15 psi. I added 3 quarts of water to canner.

I let cool overnight, then put mycobag in front of flow hood, removed the clothespins from bag, opened up bag in front of flow hood, and poured one whole jar of mycelium grown out grain into each of 2 bags. This was sealed immediately after with a 25.00 impulse sealer inside the flow hood, worked like a charm.

Kept at a constant 77 degree F with the myco tent with lava rock heater, to my disbelief, the bag already showed signs of pure white growth all over the place in the bag 1 day later, and 3 days later I could not believe how great they looked, over-run with mycelium, at this rate 7 more days and they will be ready to be crumbled up and put into 4.5 quart pyrex trays for 1 week to recover, I'll place foil over the pyrex and poke a few holes for gas exchange. Then each pyrex tray will be ready for the casing and fruiting.





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Found for less than price of a discounted movie ticket: 3lb bags of pre-pasteurized manure base casing mix, these can be found all over the net from all different places in various sizes. These bags come pre-pasteurized for two plus hours. They have horse manure, coir, shredded wheat straw, minerals, hydrated lime, ph buffers like gypsum, and correct amount of spring water to bring to field capacity.

Had simply cut open the bag and poured it into one 8 x 5 x 19 large unicorn 3T 0.2 micron filter bag, then sterilized it for 1 hour at 15 psi, this way to sterilize not only the unicorn bag but it's contents, asura and blue helix and waylitjim all sterlized their substrates, I'm not taking any chances.

These are two better photos on day 4 after pouring 1 grain spawn jar into each substrate bag, the original fan broke that was with tent, so the normal all day temp dropped from 77 to 74, replacing with a better pc fan on the way here soon. The fan acts like a convection oven, blowing warm air from the lava rock heater below upwards to all the martha tent. With a good fan, the tent maintains a constant 77 degree F all over tent when set with electronic thermostat.

The reason you still see clothespins on the bag is because after I impulse sealed the bags in front of flow hood using a twenty five dollar impulse sealer with 4,000 good reviews, I put the clips back on just to keep the top of bag upright (front falling over) as it lays against the side of martha tent.

Asura mentioned here https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/25987049 to allow 10 days for the bags to grow out completely, and to break up the bag and gently mix things up again on day 5 which will be tomorrow for me to do.



Asura:

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Colonization

I let the bags colonize for ~10 days (at about 72°F) in a dark closet. I don't know if it's the lack of light, the still air in the closet or a combination of both, but my bags grow out better this way. Prior to doing this, I used to just keep the bags on a rack in the kitchen. I would see a lot of metabolite expression. Since moving to the closet, my growth is stronger and the bags are mostly metabolite free.

12 hours or so after inoculation, I gently mix up the substrate for the first time. At day 5, I will also break up the bag and gently mix things up again. By day 10, the bags should be ready to be laid to trays. If it is not,I will toss it.

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I'm rooting for you man.

This tray looks nicely colonized and healthy. I know you had some fails before, hopefully with this one you get to the end.

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Fruiting (Part 1)

Successful fruiting of pan cyans requires the understanding of these factors: humidity, evaporation, temperature, and fresh air exchange (FAE).

Temperature

Pan cyans like temps in the 76-80°F range. If I could lock in a temp perfectly, I would have it exactly 77°F at all times. A little fluctuation doesn't seem to hurt, but if temps drop too low, especially before the first flush, it can ruin the entire grow. Drops can even happen in the middle of summer in Texas. This is why I have a heater in my grow room year around.

FAE
This is the easy part. FAE is always on. Sometimes that air is mixed with fog and sometimes it's just air. But there is always some amount of air going into the FC.

Some growers handle FAE using a repeat cycle timer that simultaneously pulls in fresh air while exhausting the old air. I prefer the always on model. It's just one less thing to think about.

Humidity & Evaporation

Pan cyans thrive a high humidity environment. However, evaporation is a major pinning trigger (by all observations). And evaporation cannot occur efficiently if your FC is always near 100% relative humidity (RH).

With this in mind, it's best to think of fruiting in two stages: pre-pin and post-pin.

During pre-pin, it's best to cycle humidity. I will set my humidity controller to a range around 90-98%. This means the fog will kick on at 90% and will shut off when it hits 98%. While on, moisture is being added and humidity will increase.

While off, humidity drops and evaporation will increase. This on/off cycle takes some amount of time, which is why some cultivators use a repeat cycle timer in lieu of a controller. Both can work well.

I don't want the environment to be too wet or too dry, so I do regularly adjust the range on my controller based on what I am seeing. Having an empty tray in the FC can really help with this dialing in. If my tray is bone dry when the cycle hits 90%, I know I can increase the range to something like 92-98%. If my tray is too wet at the high end, I might adjust the range to something like 90-97% or 90-96%. I will make whatever adjustments necessary based on what I am seeing with the empty tray.

In my current grow, for instance, I have the range set to 92-97%. These adjustments were made over the
course of the first three days of fruiting.

Post-pin is easier to manage. Once, pinning has occurred the substrate will continue to put out flush after flush. I don't worry about the humidity cycling once the initial pinning has occurred. After the pins start coming in I usually set my controller to a tight range like 94-95% to keep the environment mostly humid. Even with the humidity on, some evaporation will still occur.

RogerRabbit said:
You can have 100% humidity right at the substrate surface, while having +/-95% humidity within the air of the fruiting chamber itself.
Even at 99% humidity, if you're getting good fresh air exchange, evaporation from the substrate will occur.

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After 24 hours removed the foil cover from trays which had several toothpick sized air holes in it...filled humidifier with water, set humidity on humidity controller to TURN ON at 90 to 92 degrees humidity, and TURN OFF at 97 degrees humidity. Set variable PC fan blowing warm air up from the dual 150 watt ceramic lamp reptile lava rock heater to 2.5, low speed very quiet with still plenty of fresh air all thru the tent.

pic 1: trays look like this after removing the foil, substrate 100% colonized by the mycelium
pic 2: monsoon humidifier blows a rolling humidity over the trays (and jars when cased in a few days)
pic 3: humidity controller set to TURN ON at 90 to 92 degrees humidity, TURN OFF at 97 degrees humidity
pic 4: variable pc fan set to around 2.5 speed (low)
pic 5: monsoon humidifier set to around 3 setting (low)
pic 6: day 7 after adding grown out mycelium grain (1 to 1.25") to each of 10 jars with substrate and shaking, will case all jars in around 3 more days.



Ran across a problem with the Chinese made humidity controller I was originally using, it had no calibration feature, so even though the sensor was several points off, I was not able to calibrate to the actual real humidity in the tent, as I have 3 different humidity meters, all very accurate, while the Chinese made monitor was way off...

...so found a much better INKBIRD humidity monitor controller with built in up and down CALIBRATION buttons, so was able to calibrate the new humidity controller to the actual real humidity based on the other meters in the tent, I was able to set the target high humidity to 97 and the "turn on differential" to 90 degrees humidity, so it was able to turn on humidity when it fell below 90 and turn it off when it reached 97. This new one worked incredibly well compared to the Chinese model.

....also place a large rim plastic cup way underneath the monsoon humidity hose on one of the racks, as every so often built up drips of water at the end of the monsoon hose would fall into the cup placed below the output tube, so the water would not just get dumped into the bottom of the tent as it fell...this keeps it much cleaner inside, so no drips of water would fall into bottom of tent or any of the mushroom trays.

pic 1: this inkbird humidity monitor controller works very well all day and night to keep humidity at a set TURN ON AT 90, TURN OFF AT 97, easy to calibrate too.

pic 2...it's also important to keep the monsoon humidifier with it's long expandable hose higher than the actual spot where the hose enters the tent, this way the built up water in the hose will exit the hose into cup far below in the tent as it drips out, otherwise the water can get built up in hose and will cause humidity to stop output. I used 2 x 5 gallon buckets on top a wooden stool to raise the monsoon humidifier high enough.

pic 3: the variable pc fan had to be turned back up to normal "8" mid-high setting in order to keep blowing the warm air up and thru all the tent, this made it easy to keep temp anywhere I set it, normally at 77 to 78 degrees F, the fan speed cannot be turned on low, or the temp will not go above 75 degrees when it is freezing outside and below 65 in house. The mid high "8" setting works very well, no matter how cold it is, it's able to keep a constant 77 to 79 degrees F in all the racks of the tent.