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Haywire
Wetspot Wizard



Registered: 12/29/13
Posts: 1,611
Last seen: 4 days, 20 hours
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Re: Agar Issues [Re: Kifo]
#27108260 - 12/26/20 05:16 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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it's good that you're experimenting with agar and different recipes. But I've been working with LME for 10 years straight now for 99% of all my plates and I have never, ever seen mycelium behave badly on it. And I have made a LOT of plates during that time.
So I honestly wouldn't stress too much about it.
-------------------- Ciao mamma, guarda come mi diverto My grows Outdoor patches
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nogoodnamesleft
Stranger than average



Registered: 09/19/20
Posts: 413
Loc: Melmak
Last seen: 14 days, 24 minutes
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Re: Agar Issues [Re: Kifo]
#27113590 - 12/29/20 06:48 AM (3 years, 30 days ago) |
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Quote:
Kifo said: I'm starting to think that nutritional yeast is a key component in agar recipes. It is very high in protein and fiber, where LME, potato flakes, dextrose and BRF are all high in carbohydrates. I think mycelium doesn't just want 'more' nutrients but rather it favors a more complex array of nutrients.
To go back to my BRF recipe I'm going to try next:
BRF 10g Agar 15g BRF 500ml Water
I think what would work even better is something like this:
BRFY 10g Agar 10g BRF 1g Nutritional Yeast 500ml Water
I'll do an experiment with both of the recipes above and let you guys know my findings 
Thanks again for sharing.
I just transferred mycelium to PDYA and MEYA.
I think the people telling you not to stress don't get it.
Excellent work. Thanks again.
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Shakedown Street
Friend


Registered: 09/05/20
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A belated Merry Christmas, Kifo. I just stumbled onto your photos tonight. Thank you for sharing your agar recipes and the photos of mycelia. Very interesting....as I started growing myc. on agar earlier this year. I will be watching and making note of your observations and concludsions.
Edited by Shakedown Street (12/29/20 06:59 PM)
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nogoodnamesleft
Stranger than average



Registered: 09/19/20
Posts: 413
Loc: Melmak
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Re: Agar Issues [Re: Kifo]
#27115773 - 12/30/20 09:08 AM (3 years, 29 days ago) |
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Quote:
Kifo said: Merry Christmas everyone, I've got some findings to share!
On my last posts, I had poured some new LME plates that were less nutrient dense and this was the recipe:
LME 20g Agar 16g LME 1L Filtered Water
I did some transfers to the new LME plates and also to some PDYA plates that I knew would work well. Here are the results:
PDYA

LME

The PDYA plate looks as how I would expect for the Melmak OG mycelium I'm working on. You can see the LME plate did not perform as well. It is very weak and sparse. I made 5 more groups of transfers and they all came out the same, the PDYA outperformed the LME plates.
So I was a little disappointing with the findings because I still had not come to a conclusion as to why my LME plates were weak. I thought dropping the nutrient amount would help me get back to rhizomorphic mycelium but that was not the case. So I decided that I should try a new experiment. I was going to try a completely new recipe and I decided to try BRF (Brown Rice Flour). I poured some new BRF plates with a recipe I found to be very widely used:
BRF 9g Agar 6g BRF 500ml Water
I also decided to try another LME recipe that I made up myself. I knew that my PDYA recipe worked well so I calculated the nutrient amount of every ingredient and it was substantially higher in nutrient content than any other recipe I've ever made. So for the new LME recipe I wanted to try, I decided to up the nutrient content by 50% from the original. Here's the original recipe and new recipe:
Original LME 10g Agar 10g LME 500ml Water
New LMEY 10g Agar 15g LME 1g Nutritional Yeast 500ml Water
Here are the results from the new LMEY and BRF recipes:
BRF
 
LMEY
 
As you can see from the photos, the BRF performed alright but the LMEY performed very well! The Cambo plate is very thick rhizomorphic growth and the Avery Albino has a nice thick even tomentose growth (I haven't got it to go rhizo yet).
So this tells me that the mycelium needed MORE nutrients rather than less. In all my research, I had never seen anyone say to up the nutrient content. Everyone always says to use less nutrients, but this experiment proved that wrong. I will now be sticking with my new LMEY recipe and my PDYA recipe for my go to agar plates. I will still do some more experimenting but I feel that I am getting very close to understanding the mycelium I am working with.
I now have an nutrient value equation that I can transfer to any agar recipe to determine the correct amount of nutrients in each recipe. The next experiment I will do is with the BRF agar. I am going to try this recipe next:
BRF 10g Agar 15g BRF 500ml Water
When I get to it, I'll post my findings from that recipe. But for now, thank you so much to those who contributed to this post, this community is amazing!
Have a Merry Christmas and happy New Year!
On a side note, here's a 64g wet Cambodian fruit I harvested a couple weeks ago:

Sorry it's not on a scale for proof 
Just wanted to post to let you know I went from having the same issues on agar with my culture transfers as you, to the same improved growth that you’re noting in your photos by doing the 10g agar 15g LME 1g yeast in 500mL formula.
Thanks again. It was really driving me insane
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verytastycheese
Tripmaster
Registered: 11/11/14
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Last seen: 2 years, 11 months
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Hey all I just wanted to chime in with my counteracting results by lowering the nutrients.
I did a batch of 7gLME 10gAGAR and 500mlH2O I also poured the plates about half as thick as usual.
 
They grew quickly and strongly, if I was trying to outpace a contam this seems to be doing the trick. I'm definitely interested in the results from adding yeast though. I think I'll add a couple grams to my next batch.
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Kifo
Healer


Registered: 09/20/20
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I wonder why some people have better success with less nutrients and some with more. Is it the source of nutrients? Are some malt extracts more nutritious than others? Does the agar source play a role? I didn't think agar would make a big difference as we're primarily using it to create the consistency.
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AlsetAlokin
Student

Registered: 07/30/20
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Re: Agar Issues [Re: Kifo]
#27132866 - 01/07/21 12:42 PM (3 years, 21 days ago) |
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Quote:
verytastycheese said: Hey all I just wanted to chime in with my counteracting results by lowering the nutrients.
I did a batch of 7gLME 10gAGAR and 500mlH2O I also poured the plates about half as thick as usual.
 
They grew quickly and strongly, if I was trying to outpace a contam this seems to be doing the trick. I'm definitely interested in the results from adding yeast though. I think I'll add a couple grams to my next batch.
Beautiful plates, man. Stick to that recipe.
Quote:
Kifo said: I wonder why some people have better success with less nutrients and some with more. Is it the source of nutrients? Are some malt extracts more nutritious than others? Does the agar source play a role? I didn't think agar would make a big difference as we're primarily using it to create the consistency.
I bet you could write a masters thesis on the effects of nutrient composition in agar. Different nutes are created with different qualities and controls, same goes for agar-agar. At the end of the day it comes down to different recipes create different results for different purposes.
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Dr.Sparkle
Dr

Registered: 06/03/20
Posts: 127
Last seen: 2 years, 1 month
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My 2c
I started with stamnets
1ltr filtered water. 20g LME 20g agar 2g yeast.
I once tried to switch it up, and that set me back a while. I sometimes add in some grain I think I read that in his book too. Not sure if this is even needed, but I believe his thoughts were the myc will be accustomed to the grain and when it goes fo grain it can hit the road running.
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LtLurker
Lost Sailor



Registered: 01/03/18
Posts: 7,535
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ignore stamets. More often then not he pulls things out of his ass. It's not solid about consistent nutes. Sometimes it works the opposite where switching nutes can invigorate myc that's gotten lazy after long periods of the same thing.
Seems more like it's not a perfect bet one way or the other, and there's tons of great growers that go either way.
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GrinchGrower
N00B



Registered: 10/02/20
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Brian Jones
Club 27



Registered: 12/18/12
Posts: 12,340
Loc: attending Snake Church
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Quote:
Dr.Sparkle said: My 2c
I started with stamnets
1ltr filtered water. 20g LME 20g agar 2g yeast.
I once tried to switch it up, and that set me back a while. I sometimes add in some grain I think I read that in his book too. Not sure if this is even needed, but I believe his thoughts were the myc will be accustomed to the grain and when it goes fo grain it can hit the road running.
You don't need the yeast either.
-------------------- "The Rolling Stones will break up over Brian Jones' dead body" John Lennon I don't want no commies in my car. No Christians either. The worst thing about corruption is that it works so well,
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Tstone
St.of Circumstance



Registered: 10/16/18
Posts: 944
Loc: This Planet
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So newbies aren't confused, yeast as an additive, is Nutritional Yeast, not bread yeast.
Some of us have much more rhizo growth, using yeast, while others have not even used it. Nothing to do with Stamets, from a lab perspective, biology, is where it originated. Some use it, some don't. Perhaps my high altitude, but my plates love the shit, and won't make a plate without it. Huge difference, at least for me.
-------------------- Wake now, discover that you are the song that morning brings, but the heart has it's seasons, it's evenings and songs of it's own"
Edited by Tstone (01/07/21 09:43 PM)
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Dr.Sparkle
Dr

Registered: 06/03/20
Posts: 127
Last seen: 2 years, 1 month
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Quote:
Brian Jones said:
Quote:
Dr.Sparkle said: My 2c
I started with stamnets
1ltr filtered water. 20g LME 20g agar 2g yeast.
I once tried to switch it up, and that set me back a while. I sometimes add in some grain I think I read that in his book too. Not sure if this is even needed, but I believe his thoughts were the myc will be accustomed to the grain and when it goes fo grain it can hit the road running.
You don't need the yeast either.
Yes nutritional yeast!! I know I can use it without, but that recipe works great as is for me. Why fuck with it? My time is spent better else where. It cost fuck all and I buy it once in a blue moon. For now if someones starting out and looking for an agar recipe I’d still recommend it. In the future maybe not.
Whys everyone so keen to knock staments work. Its easy to look back and look down on peoples work.
Edited by Dr.Sparkle (01/08/21 09:50 AM)
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