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ouuwee
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Invisible looking ring around mycelium
#26830564 - 07/18/20 10:53 AM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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All my plates have this invisible looking ring around the mycelium and I'm not sure what it is
This is how it looks to the naked eye. Looks normal right?

This is how it looks if you angle it and have correct lighting. You can see this transparent looking ring around the piece I've transferred.

I've already made transfers from over 20 plates that have this issue and all the new plates have this invisible ring too! I found a picture (not mine) that looks exactly like the issue that I have. (Ignore the obvious contamination on the outer edge) What is it?? Is it contamination? If so, it's weird that it happened to all 40+ plates. I always flame sterilize on each transfer so it can't be cross contamination.
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Roger Clemency
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: ouuwee]
#26830577 - 07/18/20 11:02 AM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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I get the little exploratory outer ring on a lot of plates. I guess there are different situations though because mine have always been clean but I've seen other people saying they're always mold when they see them so IDK.
That bottom pic you posted looks suspect to me. When I get it it's not such a clean solid break between the thicker myc and thinner.
It's hard to tell anything though until they grow out some more.
-------------------- Sour grapes, sweet revenge Heaven starts right where hell ends
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ouuwee
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: Roger Clemency]
#26830765 - 07/18/20 01:21 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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Ever since I got the invisible ring, growth has been slow. It's as if the ring is hindering the growth. I would have transfer plates sit for a week and a half with little to no growth.
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LadysKnight
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: ouuwee]
#26830810 - 07/18/20 01:37 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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Try just transferring a bit of the transparent ring to a new plate, it should show itself.
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Roger Clemency
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: LadysKnight]
#26830844 - 07/18/20 02:01 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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That sounds bad, 10 days after a transfer you should have a 3/4 full plate at least.
-------------------- Sour grapes, sweet revenge Heaven starts right where hell ends
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cowcatcher
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: Roger Clemency]
#26831030 - 07/18/20 03:41 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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I just started using Agar and I have the same thing on all of my plates. I'm using Bod's oat prep water agar recipe. I am hoping it isn't contamination as it appears on all of my transfers as well.
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ItsaMeShroomio
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: cowcatcher]
#26831149 - 07/18/20 04:46 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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If it's causing growth to slow/stop, then its probably a contam. I would try transferring to a different agar recipe and see if the myc can outrun it on that. I have found rye soak water agar to work well when I see a contam like that on standard LME agar. BRF agar seems to work too, but not as well. Weaker LME agar might also work, but I haven't tried that yet.
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A.k.a
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: ItsaMeShroomio]
#26831158 - 07/18/20 04:52 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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Mine do that and slow down and I’m pretty sure it slows because it’s started to grow through the agar instead of on top. Idk though.
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cowcatcher
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: ItsaMeShroomio]
#26831370 - 07/18/20 07:00 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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It doesn't seem to slow mine down any, I have steady growth from start to finish. I have made a few small half pint jars of oats to test it out on before trying it on my larger oat jars. If it is contaminated it should show up quickly in the small jars. Depending on what I find I may try a different agar recipe.
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Micro dosing my blues away
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dfwerydfhg
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: cowcatcher]
#26834551 - 07/20/20 04:05 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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I get this a ton, would love to definitively know what it is. It doesn't seem to have caused any problems, I've inoculated multiple batches of grain with plates that show it with no obvious contamination or problems fruiting. But I'm still a total rookie at this.
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meowjinx
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: dfwerydfhg]
#26834590 - 07/20/20 04:48 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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Could just be the fungus exploring its environment. If you're gonna conquer a new land isn't the first thing you do is send surveyors to draw out its boundaries? It could be sending microscopic hyphal filaments to establish the boundaries of its substrate and plan its growth strategy accordingly.
If it's trapped in a tiny space then it may start diverting resources earlier into entering its reproductive phase
Or it could just be looking for where the nutrient source ends and then growing outwards back to the main mycelial body to "gather up" all of the resources it discovered along its way
I dunno, I'm totally just guessing. But fungi are eukaryotic organisms just like animals and plants and their behavior can be much more complex than most people may assume. Just because aesthetically WE want mycelium to grow evenly outward in a pretty little circle does not mean that that is what the mycelium "wants"
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dfwerydfhg
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: meowjinx] 1
#26835696 - 07/21/20 08:52 AM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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I get the feeling that there's a bit of "tea leaf reading" going on with agar. Half the time I see threads about this issue there's at least one person (usually with far more experience than me) insisting that the ring indicates mold. Without microscopy I guess the best confirmation is to grow it out and try to fruit.
Doesn't help that people usually post either their best rhizo plates, or obvious contams. Everything in the middle mostly doesn't show up so rookies like me don't get an idea of what's normal, except through experimentation. Which is the best way to learn anyway!
I might try varying my agar recipe, see if that alters the way this shows up.
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LadysKnight
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: dfwerydfhg]
#26835774 - 07/21/20 09:53 AM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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This is about the best pic (d3monic's) I've seen of the moldy halo. (@10:00) Notice how the clear halo is only around the mold, on the left of the culture.
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dfwerydfhg
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: LadysKnight]
#26835825 - 07/21/20 10:42 AM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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Is that mold though? Or just the interface between straggly tomentose mycelium, and a faster growing rhizomorphic part? A ton of my early transfer plates look like that, I've just never paid too much attention to the "halo" and whether it appears on the rhizo bit also.
If you took the bit from 7-8 (on D3monic's plate) and translated it all the way around in an image editor, you'd have what looks like several plates I've successfully taken to fruiting on grain, with no signs of contamination. It's just not rhizo. What if the halo is the way this particular kind of growth happens?
Here's an old pic of mine that shows the same thing. Obviously not as nice as D3monic's!
 My usual practice is to take a transfer from the rhizo bit and think no more of it. But sometimes the new plate grows out looking like the bit with the ring. And if it's even, symmetrical growth, it (so far) hasn't caused me any problems.
Here's a similar plate that's grown out all the way: the suspect bit is knotting!

Is there any other experiment that might positively identify that stuff as mold? Next time I see it, I'll for sure grab a bit of the "halo" and put it to it's own plate and see what happens.
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AtmozFear
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: dfwerydfhg]
#26835861 - 07/21/20 10:55 AM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
dfwerydfhg said: I get the feeling that there's a bit of "tea leaf reading" going on with agar. Half the time I see threads about this issue there's at least one person (usually with far more experience than me) insisting that the ring indicates mold. Without microscopy I guess the best confirmation is to grow it out and try to fruit.
Doesn't help that people usually post either their best rhizo plates, or obvious contams. Everything in the middle mostly doesn't show up so rookies like me don't get an idea of what's normal, except through experimentation. Which is the best way to learn anyway!
I might try varying my agar recipe, see if that alters the way this shows up.
well said.
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LadysKnight
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: LadysKnight]
#26836017 - 07/21/20 12:30 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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I never saw a halo til last year I got a new print and everything that came from it had this halo. I suspected it to be contamination because every plate took a month to grow out. Every jar of grain took a month or more to finish. Every shoebox took a month to colonize. When they fruited, it took SEVERAL weeks to go from tiny pin to full size. Sometimes the whole tub grew with the caps leaning upside down. I tried for 6 months to clean up the cultures, even clones had the halo, til finally I isolated the halo and saw it was an extremely slow white mold with a clear edge. So yes cultures would still look totally normal on plates other than the halo and the myc would still fruit.
I understand there are other types of halos, and other people have other experiences, but I will be avoiding halos.
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A.k.a
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: LadysKnight]
#26836023 - 07/21/20 12:32 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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How would a clone have the mold?
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dfwerydfhg
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: LadysKnight]
#26836117 - 07/21/20 01:36 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
LadysKnight said: I never saw a halo til last year I got a new print and everything that came from it had this halo. I suspected it to be contamination because every plate took a month to grow out. Every jar of grain took a month or more to finish. Every shoebox took a month to colonize. When they fruited, it took SEVERAL weeks to go from tiny pin to full size. Sometimes the whole tub grew with the caps leaning upside down. I tried for 6 months to clean up the cultures, even clones had the halo, til finally I isolated the halo and saw it was an extremely slow white mold with a clear edge. So yes cultures would still look totally normal on plates other than the halo and the myc would still fruit.
I understand there are other types of halos, and other people have other experiences, but I will be avoiding halos.
Thanks for the background! To be clear, when you said you isolated the mold, do you mean you got a plate that was free of mycelium, only the mold? I'm interested if it grew out in a circle that was transparent the whole way, or did it change its morphology at some stage? Can you remember if it was associated only with wispy growth, or did you see it on the edge of strongly rhizo mycelium also?
By the sounds of it so far, your experience is very different to mine- my "halo" plates grew out at a normal rate. So we may be talking about different things that happen to look the same.
I spent a little time trawling through D3monic's photos, just because he is the most prolific photographer of agar that I could think of (and takes great photos). One good example is this one. You can see there's several examples of a plate being shared between rhizo mycelium and wispier stuff, and in most cases the rhizo has no halo but the wispy stuff does (to varying degrees). You can also see that the growth rate has been about the same on either side.
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LadysKnight
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: dfwerydfhg]
#26836176 - 07/21/20 02:00 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
dfwerydfhg said:
Thanks for the background! To be clear, when you said you isolated the mold, do you mean you got a plate that was free of mycelium, only the mold? I'm interested if it grew out in a circle that was transparent the whole way, or did it change its morphology at some stage? Can you remember if it was associated only with wispy growth, or did you see it on the edge of strongly rhizo mycelium also?
The first isolation was accidental. It came from touching a transfer to a spot on the plate before placing it in the center. The transfer grew out normally (for that print), looking like rhizomorphic mycelium with the shiny, clear halo at the margins. The accidental spot grew a clear, shiny round culture that eventually whitened with age, from the center out. After that accidental isolation, I transferred some to a clean plate so it was the only thing on the plate. This plate grew the same as the accidental isolation and smelled distinctly of mold when none of the other plates nor jars did.
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Marxcelium
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: dfwerydfhg]
#26836205 - 07/21/20 02:17 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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This is unfortunately the best picture I have of these cultures right now, but the Puerto Rican on the right (purple agar) has the halo 100% of the time on LME agar (way less noticable on BRF agar, but that could be because it tends to be more matte than shiny). It's also always tomentose and extremely fluffy. Can't get it to go rizo no matter what I do. It's never showed contams on plates, in jars, or spawned to tubs in the two plus months I've been working with it, and it's just as vigorous if not more so than the other cubes I've got around. The clear halo very obviously seems like the leading edge of the myc in this case, so it's not always mold, at least.
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ouuwee
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: Marxcelium]
#26836316 - 07/21/20 03:18 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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I don't think we're talking about the same invisible ring. This is how mine looks after growing it out a bit. These were transfers on 7/15.
How it looks at first glance. Polypropylene plates so visibility isn't crystal clear. Also used activated carbon in an attempt to make black agar but instead I got greyish agar with sediments.

How it looks with proper lighting. You can see that mycelium tried to grow on plate 1, but after a while, the invisible ring takes over and mycelium growth stops completely. The third one you can see some sectoring
Edited by ouuwee (07/21/20 03:21 PM)
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mushboy
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: ouuwee]
#26836360 - 07/21/20 03:33 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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What's the strenght are those plates? Sorry if you already stated.
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ouuwee
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: mushboy]
#26836561 - 07/21/20 04:49 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
mushboy said: What's the strenght are those plates? Sorry if you already stated.
What's the strength? Sorry not understanding your question
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mushboy
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: ouuwee]
#26836574 - 07/21/20 04:56 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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What % of nutrition per 1000/500 ml?
Asking because the few times I used shitty premixed agar I grew lots of these.
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ouuwee
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: mushboy]
#26836697 - 07/21/20 05:52 PM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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1.4% nutrition, 500 ml 7g agar 7g LME
I didn't use any premixes and I use the same ingredients that made perfectly fine plates before.
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cowcatcher
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: ouuwee]
#26837669 - 07/22/20 08:04 AM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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I agree totally different than what I have. the ring I have is always about 2mm to 3mm in front of the leading edge of the mycelium and looks like transparent rhizomes.
 This is the best pic I could get of what i'm seeing.
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mushboy
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: cowcatcher] 1
#26837682 - 07/22/20 08:15 AM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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Take cuts from that bruh
If you looked at that under a scope I'm 99% positive it would be clean myc. Some cultures show it some dont ime.
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Marxcelium
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: cowcatcher]
#26837736 - 07/22/20 08:58 AM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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Yeah, agreed as well. My situation more closely resembles this one than the OP's.
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ItsaMeShroomio
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: Marxcelium]
#26839972 - 07/23/20 08:25 AM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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Running a test on transferring the irregular halo I see on some APE plates.
It definitely looks different then the very regular circular halo at the border of healthy growth (like cowcatchers pic):

In particular, it seems to slow down the growth and there are a few places where rhizomorphic mycelium seems to be trying to jump over the halo.
I transferred a bit from the halo region to LME agar and rye soak water agar, and in two days there is a noticeable transparent ring on the LME agar

But no growth yet (beyond the transferred LME wedge) on the rye soak water agar.

I have used the same batch of LME and rye soak water plates for healthy cube myc and it tends to grow at the same rate on both plates, so I highly suspect this is not healthy cube myc.
Will update with new pics when they grow out a bit more (and maybe I'll be brave enough to give them a sniff too).
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dfwerydfhg
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: ItsaMeShroomio]
#26855097 - 07/31/20 08:49 AM (3 years, 5 months ago) |
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So I made one little change to my agar recipe, and the halos I've been getting* seem to have abruptly disappeared. Every transfer or clone plate I've made on this batch (about 10) has been halo-free. I've also seen more rhizo morphology than I'm used to- including in transfers from tomentose plates with a halo.
So unless this is a giant coincidence, I think the food coloring that I skipped this time was the culprit. Sadly the tubes don't say the brand, but it was some basic supermarket brand, probably McCormick. A "gel color", whatever that means. I only used the blue and green stuff.
*mine are the seemingly benign halos, no with apparent effect on growth speed or general quality, except for being associated with or causing tomentose growth
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mycologi.st
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: dfwerydfhg]
#26923296 - 09/07/20 03:50 PM (3 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
dfwerydfhg said: So I made one little change to my agar recipe
Would you mind sharing what your change was?
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jay.ach
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Re: Invisible looking ring around mycelium [Re: mycologi.st]
#26923426 - 09/07/20 05:23 PM (3 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
mycologi.st said:
Quote:
dfwerydfhg said: So I made one little change to my agar recipe
Would you mind sharing what your change was?
Sounds like he skipped adding the food coloring...
-------------------- “One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” - Henry Miller LAGM v. 2.023 LAGM2021
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