Hello everyone! First I just want to thank everyone involved in this site for freely sharing your knowledge with noobs like me! I'd have even less of a clue what I was doing w/o all these great threads/teks and helpful folks.
So, a little background - I'm currently in the fruiting phase (1st flush) of a classic PF Tek (i.e. https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/24179086/fpart/all/vc/1). I have followed the steps as closely as possible and took extra care to maintain a clean/sanitary environment, especially during inoculation (SAB, mask, gloves, etc) which I did using a spore syringe bought from a reputable source. However, one thing that seems to differ a bit from others' PF tek methods in the size of jar that I used... I accidentally bought 1/4 oz tapered mason jars rather than the 1/2 oz ones that most people seem to use (it took me until now to realize this... ). For a fruiting chamber I am using a classic SGFC made from a 58qt clear tub, 1/4" holes drilled ~2" apart on all sides and ~5" of damp pearlite on the bottom. I dunked (24hrs) and rolled my colonized cakes in fresh verm before placing in the SGFC (on top of foil squares). One thing to note is I may have been a little quick to birth the cakes - I only gave them about 5 days after I could no longer see any un-colonized verm/brf. Temps for entire process hover between 69 - 75 F, in a room w/ natural light.
So now that you have a decent idea of my setup - I have a few things that I'm hoping y'all can provide some insight on. Firstly, half of my jars (5/12) did not colonize at all and the rest seemed to colonize at uneven rates. I dunked and rolled the first set of 5 fully colonized jars nearly two weeks ago and the remaining 2 just a few days ago. Could this simply be a product of it being MS/spore syringe, or is it possible something else went wrong?
My bigger concern though, is how small (and sparse) the fruits were on my first flush. The first cake to finish it's first flush only yielded about 4g WET. The rest of the cakes look like they will be about the same unless the few pins on them grow to be monsters. Is this normal? If not, could it be simply the small, 1/4 oz jars? Or is this a sign of inadequate FAE/humidity? Most answers I've seen indicate small fruits usually = not enough water (or too much?). I'm afraid the small jar size just doesn't allow for enough moisture to be absorbed into the substrate and it dries out too much in the FC, but I'm not sure if there's any truth to that. I have been misting pretty heavily (when cakes look sandy colored/dryish) and fanning at least 4-5 times day, sometimes more.
Final question/concern - 2 of my cakes have some pretty heavy blueing on the exposed mycelium (where verm layer fell off/ was grown over). I'm pretty sure this is just bad bruising judging from other posts I've seen, but I wanted to get confirmation that it's not mold or something else. If it is bruising, will it mess that cake up?
Thanks in advance y'all!
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