Greetings from Argentina. This is my first post, and I've made sure to read all the rules and recommendations, so I hope to be posting in the right forum.
This are my first attempts doing agar work. I prepare it using a MEA recipe I found some time ago on the internets. I use 500ml of tap water, 10g malt extract (syrup), 10g of agar agar, and 2g of nutritional yeast. I sterilize the mix with a pressure cooker for about 45 minutes, let it cool down for over 90 minutes, and then pour it into the cheapest plastic Petri dishes inside a glovebox with the highest care possible (cleaning and disinfection of my workspace [a closed room used solely for this kind of work], of myself, and every tool I use).
Here are some pictures of my plates after various days of colonization at room temperature (~22C / ~72F, but now it's getting colder).
Transfer, 9 days: https://i.imgur.com/KWupuWg.jpg
Transfer, 9 days: https://i.imgur.com/kz7zpQE.jpg
Clone apparently fruiting, 8 days ago: https://i.imgur.com/KxusjHp.jpg
Clone, apparently hating my agar recipe: https://i.imgur.com/Rd4q934.jpg
Transfer, 3 days: https://i.imgur.com/UKttSnn.jpg
This is definitely a really bad thing, and I've already tossed it, but I found it so beautiful:
https://i.imgur.com/8DvwoUy.jpg
This was taken at 18 days, and I've stored it in the fridge ever since: https://i.imgur.com/PJM3yyC.jpg
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So I feel that growth has been a little slow on this ones. Maybe it's because of the agar recipe I use having too much nutrients. Maybe it's too cold for them to grow faster. I know that agar isn't for expanding mycelium, but nevertheless I feel that I can improve on that recipe for next times.
So far I've made ~60 sterilized agar plates and about 8 have been contaminated. So there's plenty of room for improvement. I plan on getting a "laminar flow hood" and a more sealed and cleaner environment to do this work.
One question I do have is that... it seems that mycelium from ~9 days from cloning from a fruit I got buying from a local seller is already fruiting! That's interesting, because I thought that it could happen, but much, much later (at >3 weeks, maybe?). So yeah, I don't know what to do with that one. Any recommendations?
Thanks in advance.
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Hi Mate,
Im from Argentina too, and I really like see other fellow shroomers working on Agar with the same ingredients I have. For the ones how dont know here in Argentina we haven't got the same Agar-Agar you have (I suspect that ours have a nefarius ammount of preservatives), also we don't have Light Malt Extract.
That's because I would like to see further updates in this thread.
Trying to answer your question, I sincerely don't see any fruiting in those images. The "puff"/cotton like formations are normal tomentose growing, product of your MS start point. Other images present more rhizomorphic growing, which you can use to transfer and Isolate.
Hope I see you soon mate, Kind regards
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