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Student240
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Registered: 10/14/20
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Pure white mold colonizing all jars or just paranoia?
#26985020 - 10/14/20 12:13 PM (3 years, 4 months ago) |
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Hello everyone, long time lurker, first-time poster.
This is my second grow. I used what was sold to me as a sterile spore solution to inoculate three jars of rye grain and five liquid culture jars. All successfully colonized. With the liquid culture, I successfully inoculated another jar for the first grow. Three flushes worked out really well. I was psyched about the early success. Since then I've been only having problems with contamination, all bacterial. Consequently, I've tried using peroxide, which solved the bacterial contamination problem and led to quickly colonizing jars, which at first I found really exciting. At the moment I have three jars that are colonizing nicely with what I am sure is mycelium and about 15 jars that either are not colonizing at all or colonizing with weird hyphae: I started growing really suspicious when I couldn't see clear signs of rhizomorphic growth. I'm 99% sure I've caught a simple white mold. It's all fluffy and starts filling the empty space of the jar.
There are no discolorations, nothing but white chaotic fibrous fluff. Just give it to me straight, I've been putting weeks of waiting into growing really perfect mold, haven't I?
This is a jar that's been sitting at 28C for three weeks. Note that any discolorations are due to vermiculite, imperfect white balance, or reflections, there is no discoloration visible in the mold*celium. It's pure white mycelium, grain, and vermiculite, nothing else.


This is the only spot where I see something reminiscent of rhizomorphic growth.

This is approximately a week old. It's suspiciously quick compared to my previous attempts. Also noteworthy is that this is growing at room temperature and colonized a lot quicker than the one sitting at 28C

I snapped some microscopic pictures with a potato-microscope. The quality is really bad and I have no clue what the actual magnification is, but you can clearly see why I think it looks suspicious. It's fuzzy. Very fuzzy.
This is the part that I thought for a while looked rhizome-like, but now I'm not sure.
 And directly adjacent to that:

And from the freshly inoculated jars:


I guess I'll throw out my jars and liquid cultures and start from scratch, aren't I?
Thanks and have a great night.
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tryptkaloids
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Re: Pure white mold colonizing all jars or just paranoia? [Re: Student240]
#26985026 - 10/14/20 12:17 PM (3 years, 4 months ago) |
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Hard to say. The verm in there doesn't help
-------------------- "Remember, kids, the difference between science and screwing around is writing it down" -adam savage Flowchart for Recommended plan of action. Learn the tried and true way to grow mushrooms Use the Damn search engine After you know what you're doing, take a break Pick a book, Make some chips! Josex said:Don't take the site seriously bro, ain't worth it.
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Student240
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Re: Pure white mold colonizing all jars or just paranoia? [Re: tryptkaloids]
#26985041 - 10/14/20 12:24 PM (3 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
tryptkaloids said: Hard to say. The verm in there doesn't help
Yeah I added some vermiculite because my grain was too wet and it was a feeble attempt at reducing the water content a little. But trust me, there is no discoloration whatsoever, it's pure white fluff. Anything I can do to help? More/different pictures?
I sure don't want to open them without pc'ing them first...
Are there conditions under which cubensis mycelium can grow like this, without showing any signs of rhizomorphic growth? Is there a chance that it will become rhizomorphic at some point?
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tryptkaloids
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Re: Pure white mold colonizing all jars or just paranoia? [Re: Student240]
#26985186 - 10/14/20 01:48 PM (3 years, 4 months ago) |
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It's possible to have pure tomentose myc. Kinda reminds me of how wbs jars tend to look.
Could be mold tho. open it outside, give it a whiff, decide if it's worth it.
First 3 on the fence, 4th pic looks decent.
Last 2 look trash
-------------------- "Remember, kids, the difference between science and screwing around is writing it down" -adam savage Flowchart for Recommended plan of action. Learn the tried and true way to grow mushrooms Use the Damn search engine After you know what you're doing, take a break Pick a book, Make some chips! Josex said:Don't take the site seriously bro, ain't worth it.
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Student240
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Re: Pure white mold colonizing all jars or just paranoia? [Re: tryptkaloids]
#26991639 - 10/18/20 03:24 PM (3 years, 3 months ago) |
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Update: definitely smells like pure forest! Yay!
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tryptkaloids
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Re: Pure white mold colonizing all jars or just paranoia? [Re: Student240]
#26991683 - 10/18/20 04:02 PM (3 years, 3 months ago) |
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Forest? That doesn't sound good. Should smell like mushrooms
-------------------- "Remember, kids, the difference between science and screwing around is writing it down" -adam savage Flowchart for Recommended plan of action. Learn the tried and true way to grow mushrooms Use the Damn search engine After you know what you're doing, take a break Pick a book, Make some chips! Josex said:Don't take the site seriously bro, ain't worth it.
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Student240
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Re: Pure white mold colonizing all jars or just paranoia? [Re: tryptkaloids]
#26992042 - 10/18/20 09:22 PM (3 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
tryptkaloids said: Forest? That doesn't sound good. Should smell like mushrooms
To me, mushrooms smell like forest. Definitely not like mold. I've cased it in pasteurized 50/50 vermiculite/peat, it's perfect mycelium just as I know it from previous runs.
Now I just hope I don't get mold in this stage.
My last attempt was ruined because I didn't get good colonization and after a week and a half of letting it rest it got blue mold and I threw it out.
I thoroughly cleaned the fruiting chamber and the incubation chamber with chlorox, peroxide, and ipa.
But I keep finding contradicting advice: a few say I can put it in the fruiting chamber right after casing (which seems favorable to me, because the surface gets to dry out a little instead of staying under the same moisture for extended periods) and most say I should keep the cased substrate in colonization conditions until I see the mycelium cover most of the surface (which I don't trust, give me one reason why the few mold spores that are guaranteed to be still alive there won't germinate?)
I'm sorry, I know this is a very basic question, I want to trust the the method others have shown to work (wait until colonized), but which are the specific conditions that will make sure I don't get mold?
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SingularFusion


Registered: 10/31/18
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Re: Pure white mold colonizing all jars or just paranoia? [Re: Student240]
#26992100 - 10/18/20 10:21 PM (3 years, 3 months ago) |
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there are some opposing views on the topic of what 'makes sure you don't get mold'
in my humble opinion, your grain spawn being clean is the only thing that matters. If you focus on that, almost every other rule can be bent a little
If your jar of spawn is allegedly perfect, then you case it and it molds within a week like you say, the mold was very likely already in your grain jars and you missed it visually. Only other option is your pasteurization is somehow deficient. Coir is the easiest sub/casing to prepare, by the way, for future reference. It's almost completely fuckup proof if you are awake when you do it (no pasteurization or even no boiling water at all is the new way with coir apparently)
I personally colonize the sub with the outdated method, going till almost fully colonized before I open it up and raise the FAE
Lots of people have great success just giving final FAE conditions right at spawn too. I seem to have better success with the old ways myself
Just keep it simple and do what works for you. Make lots of projects, if some fail it is not a disaster, and you will learn more from the fails than the successes in most cases
All the best
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Student240
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Re: Pure white mold colonizing all jars or just paranoia? [Re: SingularFusion]
#26993114 - 10/19/20 02:29 PM (3 years, 3 months ago) |
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Thanks, this is good advice. Keeping it clean might have been something I haven't put enough focus on.
Quote:
Nef said: Only other option is your pasteurization is somehow deficient.
I think what happened was that some spores landed on the casing because I didn't seal it properly, I used black plastic wrap to keep light out but kept it in my fruiting chamber. The mold originated from a spot exposed to draft.
The casing I've done now I've properly pasteurized, but it was exposed to air a lot and I'm afraid that some spores might have gotten mixed in during casing. So I'll be doing my next casing in my vertical flow hood with all the disinfection in place as if I was doing sterile work. It'll take longer, but if it makes the difference it'll be worth it. I know it's probably overkill, but if I successively approximate to what work and what doesn't I guess it's OK.
Quote:
Nef said: Coir is the easiest sub/casing to prepare, by the way, for future reference. It's almost completely fuckup proof if you are awake when you do it (no pasteurization or even no boiling water at all is the new way with coir apparently)
Is coir less vulnerable than verm? I have a lot of verm but only a little peat left, so I'll probably go with coir next, thanks!
Quote:
Nef said: Just keep it simple and do what works for you. Make lots of projects, if some fail it is not a disaster, and you will learn more from the fails than the successes in most cases
Totally agree! Every attempt so far I've done something different and mainly through the failures I've landed on a quite efficient way to do it, now all I need to do it get it to work reliably. Thanks for the time and advice!
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