LadysKnight said:

Your cultures have been looking great for a while now.
Anything you decide to do with those will succeed.

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A.k.a said:

Those are clean as fuck. Clean myc from a solid culture is as good as it gets.


It does look weird when the myc puffs up on the wedge, I’ve had some go up to the lid before.

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thanks for taking note of my work and progress, LadysKnight. I've been trying to get something decent for a while now.

A.k.a that is music to my ears, its been tough discerning some mold i had meshed in my plates from this myc- which i can finally be certain is normal now. I've been looking at like 70% of my transfers funny because i couldn't tell if it was myc or tainted- its good to know i can finally be confident they are clean, and know it is normal myc behavior... i've been stressin that a lot!


Agar tax with a nasty contam plate. looks like it got a pimple too

A.k.a said:

With germ plates I usually don’t transfer until things have grown out a little bit so I can see the different growths.


I do try to take as small a wedge as possible with germ plates and t1s to narrow the genetics and to try and get a clean sample. The thing with spore plates is you never know where hidden contam is so the smaller the better.

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rockyfungus said:

I always assumed it's reaching for fresher air, aerial myc. Or trying to escape an unseen contam? I see it most often on my unmodified agar jars.

someone with more experience have a better answer?

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roarkell said:

Once it hits a barrier it will try to overcome it... or its searching for nutrition... or some combination of both... I wouldn't expect it to be a response to a contam... also, I personally toss plates with ANY contam... don't let your shit grow over some nasties and then forget which plates are which!!

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Do you think it could be sending out rhizomorphic growth to overcome the barrier? The edges of the cups could be viewed as both a physical barrier and a lack of nutrition. The walls of plastic cups or petri dishes contain no nutrients, of course, lol.

I've been experimenting over the past month and have made just under 100 plastic cups of agar.

I like pouring a very thin layer of agar in each container. I can shine a light from underneath or flip the containers upside down and shine a light from underneath and any kind of visible contamination shows itself instantly.

Due to the amount of plates I have right now I'm throwing out any plates with signs of contamination. There isn't a need to keep them or transfer away from the contamination.

The only contamination I've seen was caused by bad sterile technique when I first started and also from a woodlovers print streaked onto agar. Presumably the woodlovers print came from the cap of a fruit that was harvested outdoors so the print may have contained more contamination just because it came from outdoors.

The cups I'm using are 30ml. They're very small which makes it hard to transfer small amounts of mycelium into to new cups. Their size also makes it hard to transfer away from contamination.


Thanks to both of you for the responses Agar is very quickly becoming a hobby. It's quite addictive.

aNewBeginning said:

Agar is very quickly becoming a hobby. It's quite addictive.

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Agar is the best, totally agree

Sockadin said:

I had a sleeve of poured plates that were sitting on the shelf half wrapped. I got them out this morning to do some GMM transfers. Every plate had aspergillus outbreaks.


  Also to those talking about having issues flameing the scalpel. Check out this thread I am still working on, but you get the idea.

Paper Clip

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