|
DoctorDoggo
Experienced

Registered: 01/08/20
Posts: 6
Last seen: 3 years, 6 months
|
Need some quick help on shoeboxes please!
#26827251 - 07/16/20 03:46 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Hello. It has been 16 days since I dropped WBS into these tubs.
Could you guys let me know why they're not pinning? Do I need more gas exchange? There are no holes in these shoeboxes and I have not been opening the lid since I started them. I've read in several shoebox teks that fanning shouldn't be necessary. Should I try putting a plastic bag on top instead of the lid? They're sitting near a window so light isn't so much of an issue. I'm letting them grow in ambient midwestern weather at the moment.
Unfortunately the tub in third picture is probably garbage at this point. Mycelium looks mostly healthy everywhere in the tub, but it's got a gnarly smell coming from it when I opened it to take the pictures and I see these little fucker white larvae crawling on the surface. Not sure what's up with that. What do you think?


|
Roshambastic21
Goober



Registered: 04/22/19
Posts: 228
Loc: Omicron-Persei 8
Last seen: 3 years, 3 months
|
Re: Need some quick help on shoeboxes please! [Re: DoctorDoggo]
#26827320 - 07/16/20 04:11 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Looks pretty bacterial IMO, especially given that you smelled a funky smell sorry man, it all probably came down to how you prepped your spawn.
-------------------- Keep it Secret. Keep it Safe.
|
DoctorDoggo
Experienced

Registered: 01/08/20
Posts: 6
Last seen: 3 years, 6 months
|
Re: Need some quick help on shoeboxes please! [Re: Roshambastic21]
#26827351 - 07/16/20 04:22 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Sigh. Thanks for your input. I figured something was up. I'm very sad atm. I have been very successful growing in agar, liquid culture, and in WBS....but I have yet to be able to get fruits in the 7 months I've been at this.
Failure is a really brutal but honest teacher. I'll try not to dwell too much on it. I was really hopeful these boxes would turn out right, but I have to believe the mushroom will appear when I am ready.
|
w00tmycelium
Stranger


Registered: 11/28/19
Posts: 159
Last seen: 3 years, 4 months
|
Re: Need some quick help on shoeboxes please! [Re: DoctorDoggo]
#26827376 - 07/16/20 04:36 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Was going to say visually it looked fine at first, but I always look for that classic mycelium smell.. if you smell something bad, it's probably bad. I would personally still try to fruit it just to see, but I'm an outlier and probably shouldn't take my advice on that one.
|
DoctorDoggo
Experienced

Registered: 01/08/20
Posts: 6
Last seen: 3 years, 6 months
|
Re: Need some quick help on shoeboxes please! [Re: w00tmycelium]
#26827400 - 07/16/20 04:52 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Visually, I agree with you, it looks pretty healthy all around the box. I see a strong rhizomorphic phenotype all over and there's really no signs of grossness anywhere except on the surface.
Picture 1 doesn't have a smell. It smells like I *think* it should smell. Picture 2 has a funky smell. Picture 3 has the smell and these gross ass white larvae that you can't see from the picture but I see moving around in person.
I'll leave them as is and see if I get something, as you suggest. In the meantime I'll start more jars this weekend.
Could anyone give me any insight as to why some of those water droplets look brownish/yellow? Is that metabolite, contamination, normal, or maybe a little bit of all three?
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can improve? If indeed these are contaminated I may know why and can try to correct for it in my next boxes.
|
meowjinx
Stranger

Registered: 05/20/19
Posts: 492
Last seen: 1 year, 6 months
|
Re: Need some quick help on shoeboxes please! [Re: w00tmycelium]
#26827433 - 07/16/20 05:10 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Hello
If you have actual insect larvae in your shoeboxes then you need to move them to an area where you are sure you don't have any flying insects around. Insects eggs def shouldn't be able to survive a PC cycle so they would have gotten in after spawning. The sour/rotten smell is most likely bacterial contamination
If you haven't managed ANY fruits I'd probably recommend trying to take a step back and holding off on the Liquid Culture until you've done a few complete grows
I'm not sure what your exact methods are,but if you've gone 7 months w/o any fruits then there has to be a mistake(s) that you're overlooking
You'll maximize your chances of success by keeping things simple. PC your grains for at least 2 hours and make sure it reaches 15 PSI. Maybe do just 10 or less quart jars. Do enough agar transfers until you're sure you have a clean culture, then cut out only small pieces and use them to inoculate those grain jars directly. Skip anything fancier for now, like G2G or LC. Sometimes you have to take one step back before you can move two steps forward. Nothing wrong with that
Re-examine your sterile technique. Make sure the room you're doing your SAB work in doesn't have a running fan or vent nearby. Flame sterilize your metal tools. Spray walls of SAB w/ soap water. Use nitrile gloves and face mask if you can. Rub iso alcohol on your forearms and gloves (just always be safe if you work w/ both alcohol and a torch)
As far as I know you don't need to mod shoeboxes. Some growers say they go "straight to fruiting conditions" after spawning. Others wait until the spawn has colonized the coir. In either case you shouldn't worry too much about extra FAE unless you're keeping them in a very enclosed place. Normally when cubes are ready to start making shrooms you'll see the appearance of the surface of the mycelium start to change: you'll see a bunch of little bumps start to form all over. These are called knots and some will eventually go on to become pins and then full-on shrooms. Lack of FAE shouldn't be a problem w/ a shoebox until you get to the pinning stage
I don't know much about WBS so I can't give you any sort of advice on that subject. I'm newb too so I'm sure others here can provide much better tips, but my main tip to you is to try a strict agar-to-grain grow for now
Edited by meowjinx (07/16/20 05:12 PM)
|
w00tmycelium
Stranger


Registered: 11/28/19
Posts: 159
Last seen: 3 years, 4 months
|
Re: Need some quick help on shoeboxes please! [Re: meowjinx]
#26827902 - 07/16/20 09:50 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
I only do WBS and grains, so I can say if you have larvae, you should immediately just put it in a dumpster. There should only be mycelium, but even contaminations aren't as bad as larvae.
|
A.k.a
Stranger



Registered: 10/27/19
Posts: 16,816
Loc: Gaming the system
Last seen: 1 day, 35 minutes
|
Re: Need some quick help on shoeboxes please! [Re: w00tmycelium]
#26828017 - 07/16/20 11:49 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
The myc is super bacterial on all of those, it shouldn’t be all puffed up and thick like that.
It’s got to be a problem somewhere with sterile technique. Contaminated mycelium will grow on plates, lc and grain, but as you know there’s a good chance it won’t fruit.
Do you have pictures of the plates you used or are currently using?
Extremely rhizo surfaces look more like this

I’ve only ever used wbs, I don’t have tons of pictures but this one was healthy rhizo in the jar

The yellow/brown drops on the surface are metabolites which are from fighting contamination.
--------------------
LAGM2020     
Edited by A.k.a (07/16/20 11:58 PM)
|
w00tmycelium
Stranger


Registered: 11/28/19
Posts: 159
Last seen: 3 years, 4 months
|
Re: Need some quick help on shoeboxes please! [Re: A.k.a]
#26829919 - 07/17/20 11:11 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Agree with Aka, all of my WBS with healhty mycelium looks identical to that (and have some I can post pics of, there are various levels of growth/health/behavior but should look exactly like that.)
Any sort of living larvae though... I still try to isolate potentially contaminated sections of colonies but larvae just seems seriously bad.
My question for Aka: that looks like very uniform growth, whereas contamination usually manifests itself in various sections in most things I've seen. Do you really think that entire thing is equally contaminated? What are the odds of that?
|
Babylon
Shaman


Registered: 05/15/11
Posts: 442
Last seen: 2 years, 9 months
|
Re: Need some quick help on shoeboxes please! [Re: w00tmycelium]
#26829926 - 07/17/20 11:19 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
If you have not succeeded at growing in a tub yet chances are you are not as good at agar, liquid culture, and grain as you think you are. It might be worth starting a thread to get feedback on your agar, find out what you might be doing wrong in that respect.
|
southbounpachyderm
Stranger
Registered: 07/20/18
Posts: 282
Last seen: 3 years, 6 months
|
Re: Need some quick help on shoeboxes please! [Re: Babylon]
#26829962 - 07/17/20 11:46 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Completely agree and will add that this looks like mycogone. You're failing catastrophically somewhere along the line. Whether that is agar, spawn prep, or sterile tek I do not know but something is going really wrong.
|
southbounpachyderm
Stranger
Registered: 07/20/18
Posts: 282
Last seen: 3 years, 6 months
|
|
Here is a quick little visual aid for anyone who thinks this might "visually" look fine. Nothing about these tubs looks fine at all. https://www.mdpi.com/pathogens/pathogens-08-00179/article_deploy/html/images/pathogens-08-00179-g002-550.jpg
Has a very classic wet bubble disease look.
|
w00tmycelium
Stranger


Registered: 11/28/19
Posts: 159
Last seen: 3 years, 4 months
|
|
Quote:
southbounpachyderm said: Here is a quick little visual aid for anyone who thinks this might "visually" look fine. Nothing about these tubs looks fine at all. https://www.mdpi.com/pathogens/pathogens-08-00179/article_deploy/html/images/pathogens-08-00179-g002-550.jpg
Has a very classic wet bubble disease look.
You are correct on those for sure. I've just seen various bubbles colonizing that still produced a ton of fruits.
https://i.imgur.com/MD3Li.jpg
Here is an example of what I mean. You can see tons of pinsets and tons of small "bubbles" around everything, but the pinsets are very clean and they were all fine. They don't seem quite as dense, but that could very well be just a trait of the strain too I think.
|
southbounpachyderm
Stranger
Registered: 07/20/18
Posts: 282
Last seen: 3 years, 6 months
|
Re: Need some quick help on shoeboxes please! [Re: w00tmycelium]
#26830041 - 07/18/20 12:48 AM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Thats just water droplets tho. That's normal and what you should aim for on a substrate. You want those little water droplets just like that on you substrate. The bubble look is large circular raised protrusions with what looks like metabolites coming from them.
|
w00tmycelium
Stranger


Registered: 11/28/19
Posts: 159
Last seen: 3 years, 4 months
|
|
You might be right, I just thought it might be some dense mycelium because there's no discoloration. I'd still do a smell test, the good stuff should smell the right way.
|
A.k.a
Stranger



Registered: 10/27/19
Posts: 16,816
Loc: Gaming the system
Last seen: 1 day, 35 minutes
|
Re: Need some quick help on shoeboxes please! [Re: w00tmycelium]
#26830281 - 07/18/20 07:14 AM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
Yeah that imagur link is a healthy tub. Just knots and water.
--------------------
LAGM2020     
|
jcm4620
Stranger


Registered: 05/26/19
Posts: 6,700
Last seen: 2 years, 1 day
|
Re: Need some quick help on shoeboxes please! [Re: A.k.a]
#26830337 - 07/18/20 08:29 AM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
|
|
lol no offense but i didnt know if i was looking at a shoebox or a tub of rotten cottage cheese 🤮🤮
|
|