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SpaceDrooze
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Spore Viability Question
#26751685 - 06/17/20 01:26 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
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Hello everyone,
Around Christmas 2018 I ordered some spores from a vendor. I got a few syringes and a couple of Spore prints. All cubes. They came together as a Christmas bundle or whatever.
Since receiving them I have tried PF Tek three separate times. Each time I get virtually no colonization. I may see a little mycelium pop up in 1/10 jars, but they colonize too slow and eventually stall or get contaminated.
I've had success with BRF jars before, and I'm doing the same shit now, but not getting any luck.
I ran out of syringes so I figured I'd try my hand at agar. I used pastys tek to make the agar plates. I inoculated them with the prints. Waited a week. Nothing. Two weeks, nothing. I could see clumps of spores on a couple of the plates, but nothing came from them. I decided to open a couple and put them back. Surely enough, contams started growing in no time. (did this on purpose as a kind of way to see if I fucked up the agar).
So I'm 0/4 growing with this batch of spores.
They all came at the same time. They've been stores in Tupperware in the back of my fridge and only opened a few times to take out whatever I needes, then put back.
There are three things that all these grows have in common.
1 - they all came from the same vendor at the same time 2 - they were all stored in the same place 3 - they're all being grown by me
My question is, what are the odds that everything I got from the vendor was defective? Could it be my storage method? Is there a way, other than growing a cake or an agar plate, to test for Spore viability?
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Edited by SpaceDrooze (06/17/20 01:35 PM)
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The Fresh Prints
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Re: Spore Viability Question [Re: SpaceDrooze]
#26751698 - 06/17/20 01:34 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
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Take the vendor's name out of your post dude. It's definitely something you did along the way. That particular vendor is top notch.
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SpaceDrooze
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Edited. My bad. Didn't realize that was bad etiquette. Thanks for the feedback. I've had good luck with them previously too.
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The Fresh Prints
Smell ya later



Registered: 05/19/12
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Re: Spore Viability Question [Re: SpaceDrooze]
#26751722 - 06/17/20 01:45 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
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I'd say just give it another shot. Post pics, ask questions, read as much as you can. Spores can take a long time. I had Ps. Cyan spores take two full weeks to germ on agar.
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Caps McGee
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Re: Spore Viability Question [Re: SpaceDrooze]
#26751729 - 06/17/20 01:46 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
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Try agar first, there are so many variable when dealing with the production of spore syringes that a clean one is surprising... going to agar allows you to isolate the intended mycelium before going to grain in moist, low air conditions where competitors will have the upper hand from gate... it will also tell whether the contamination is the syringe or your person: syringe related contamination will grow out concentric with the mushroom mycelium, where as cross contamination due to subpar technique will display as satelite colonies growing completely isolated from the inoculation point
How long ago did you inoculate? some spores especially older ones, can be stubborn and take weeks to germinate
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SpaceDrooze
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Re: Spore Viability Question [Re: Caps McGee]
#26751945 - 06/17/20 03:14 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
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Inoculation was done about 4 weeks ago now. Your message is inspiring. Maybe I'm just impatient. How long does it usually take for your agar plates to fill out once the mycelium appears?
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SpaceDrooze
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Will do. I suspect I may have messed up a couple of small things in my agar mix, like not boiling the potato flakes long enough. They sort of all fell to the bottom. I also didn't use food coloring so maybe there was more there than I thought. We'll see. Thanks for the help.
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Caps McGee
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Re: Spore Viability Question [Re: SpaceDrooze]
#26751952 - 06/17/20 03:16 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
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Typically colonized 3/4 of a 100mm plate(point of use in my system) within 7-10 days, culture dependent
Food coloring isn't necessary, some think it helps with visibility: I disagree and do not use color
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SpaceDrooze
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Re: Spore Viability Question [Re: Caps McGee]
#26751973 - 06/17/20 03:25 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
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Yeah, I'm way beyond that at this point, but I'm less afraid of broken spores now, and more comfortable with my inadequacy as a grower lol.
Is Tupperware in the back of the fridge a decent way to store syringes and spores?
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Caps McGee
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Re: Spore Viability Question [Re: SpaceDrooze]
#26752051 - 06/17/20 04:03 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
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Syringes are best in cold storage, prinys are better to keep in a cool dry dark space, like a drawer or box in the closet
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SpaceDrooze
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Re: Spore Viability Question [Re: Caps McGee]
#26752108 - 06/17/20 04:30 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
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Beautiful. Thanks for the help.
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Caps McGee
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Re: Spore Viability Question [Re: SpaceDrooze]
#26752140 - 06/17/20 04:43 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
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CagedApe
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Re: Spore Viability Question [Re: Caps McGee]
#26752304 - 06/17/20 05:40 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
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I'm dealing with the same thing with some syringes I ordered.
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Eywa_devotee
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Re: Spore Viability Question [Re: CagedApe]
#26752363 - 06/17/20 06:03 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
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Probably got frozen in the postal truck. Highly hydrated spores will pop and die if frozen. If you look at them under a microscope you will see them blown out.
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lateforthafuture
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Re: Spore Viability Question [Re: SpaceDrooze]
#26752377 - 06/17/20 06:09 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
SpaceDrooze said: Inoculation was done about 4 weeks ago now. Your message is inspiring. Maybe I'm just impatient. How long does it usually take for your agar plates to fill out once the mycelium appears?
Don't let your mycelium grow out to much on your germination plates. I transfer as soon as there's enough clean looking healthy mycelium to transfer (a tiny wedge is all you need, the smaller the better). You're trying to out run any possible contams and get the clean healthly mycelium onto a new plate.
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CagedApe
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Quote:
Eywa_devotee said: Probably got frozen in the postal truck. Highly hydrated spores will pop and die if frozen. If you look at them under a microscope you will see them blown out.
The same won't happen when in the fridge would it?
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SpaceDrooze
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So you inoculate one agar plate then do agar to agar transfer?
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lateforthafuture
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Re: Spore Viability Question [Re: SpaceDrooze]
#26752526 - 06/17/20 06:56 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
SpaceDrooze said: So you inoculate one agar plate then do agar to agar transfer?
Yep. Depending on how dirty your syringe is and how good your sterile technique is ...you may do as little as one transfer from the germ plate... to many (5 plus).
But once you have some clean cultures on agar things move fast...especially if you g2g... you can make so much clean spawn with g2g it is crazy.
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SpaceDrooze
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That makes sense. I made up like 10 plates and inoculated them all from a spore print. I planned to tiger drop them each into their own jars. Your idea seems better though. Much obliged.
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SpaceDrooze
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Quote:
SpaceDrooze said: Inoculation was done about 4 weeks ago now. Your message is inspiring. Maybe I'm just impatient. How long does it usually take for your agar plates to fill out once the mycelium appears?
Resurrecting this post to explain the outcome in case someone stumbles upon this thread with the same issue.
I left the plates for 4 weeks, no change at all. I kept watching them for a few more weeks and nothing happened. I wound up abandoning them in a dark corner and forgetting about them for months.
When I came back, the mycelium had filled the plates and even had several small mushrooms that had grown out of the plate and dried up and died.
The moral of the story is, I was impatient and I lost 7 or so healthy plates because I stopped watching. Don't give up! Sometimes things move slow.
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