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zilker
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Registered: 05/25/22
Posts: 64
Loc: Texas
Last seen: 14 days, 22 hours
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Re: Let's talk about Water Agar!! 💧 [Re: Rotnpins] 1
#27900720 - 08/12/22 01:54 PM (1 year, 5 months ago) |
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That's a good idea 💡 I don't have any plates with bacterial colonies that haven't been overtaken by mycelium at the moment, but I'm sure I'll come across some soon and give it a try and post the results
Shouldn't be too hard to find bacteria. Grab your kitchen sponge, open one of your plates, touch the corner of the sponge to the agar, and seal her back up. Or, I can send you a complimentary plate in the name of science! Lol.
On a more serious note, I see huge potential for this as being a 2 transfer until clean, opposed to a 3 transfer until clean. That will literally save days, weeks, and for some of you old timers, years in transfer/wait time.
I'll definitely be following this post in the future. Nice job, Rotnpins!
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zilker
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Registered: 05/25/22
Posts: 64
Loc: Texas
Last seen: 14 days, 22 hours
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Re: Let's talk about Water Agar!! 💧 [Re: baz] 3
#27907494 - 08/17/22 11:25 PM (1 year, 5 months ago) |
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You beat me to it.
I found an uncommon shroom in my back yard last weekend, Reddening Lepiota (red lip sounds better ). I left the spore print in open air until the ID was confirmed, then scraped into foil with a razor so it's contaminated to hell and back. Figure this is a pretty good study on the difference between the two agars?
Made 40 plates last night, half LMEY & half WA. Last task of the night was adding the spores to the plate. LMEY plate was cooled enough but had to wait on the WA until this morning...9 hour time difference. Although I'm not sure what the myc is supposed to look like for this genus/species, I assume it doesn't resemble bacteria, as suspected in the LMEY pic.
Time difference...even after ~equal time, WA still looks less contaminated 9 hours later than the LMEY did. I'm going on memory, didn't take pic, but I'll have time-equal pics soon and will edit post. Not sure either of these will make it, but hopefully it gives somewhat of a controlled study on how contam reacts to the WA??
Haven't USFSE, but wonder if anyone has tried spraying ISO on a spore plate with extreme bacteria contam, prior to myc growth?


8/18 - About 24hrs from last post, 48hrs from LMEY noc, and 36hrs from WA noc. LMEY is contaminated AF! WA is holding the contams back for the most part. WA has myc growth in two spots. Not visible in the pic and I barely caught it with a ray of sun today, but it's there.
The dark spot in the 1st microscope pic appears to be a mushroom crumb from the MS sample I saved. 2nd appears to be spore germination. 3rd is closeup of 2nd pic. Probably transfer WA to WA tomorrow.
Mind you, this mushroom was growing in the yard, finger fucked to death w/o gloves, and the spore print was left in open air to dry for well over 12hrs. Pretty impressive IMO.
Again, nice job Rotn.
LMEY:
WA:
Microscope 1:
Microscope 2:

Microscope 3:

8/25 - Updated pics on the two plates. Never attempted to transfer Plate #1 which is the nutrient plate b/c it never showed signs of growth. Going in the trash today. Made 3 transfers from Plate #2 on 8/19. As you can see, although it did a great job keeping the bacteria at bay, it's now showing signs of the same mold (stachybotrys chartarum?) that #1 has. I originally had plans to transfer to nutrient, but I think I'm going to transfer to water one more time to be safe.


I'll end the progress reports here and say that WA did the job it was supposed to do. Took something dirty AF, cleaned it up nicely in 7 days, whereas it would have been trash with a standard nutrient plate. Any future transfers are SOP and any future reporting would be redundant. Cheers!
Edited by zilker (08/25/22 10:41 AM)
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zilker
No Entitlements Here


Registered: 05/25/22
Posts: 64
Loc: Texas
Last seen: 14 days, 22 hours
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Re: Let's talk about Water Agar!! 💧 [Re: Rotnpins] 1
#27917434 - 08/24/22 11:21 PM (1 year, 5 months ago) |
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Rotnpins: I really liked how he used it to get a sample straight from some substrate.. I don't think I would have thought of doing that.
Whaaaaat??? Don't tell me I thought about something before you did, amigo? C'mon Rotn, that's gotta be worth a rating for this newbie, eh?!? Also, transferring from one water to another can be tricky because it wants to stick the blade. I had a really hard time with one of them and ended up slicing into the agar, touching the bottom. That fucker has equal growth on the top AND bottom of the plate all the way to the edge (it grows REALLY fast on water...need to transfer much sooner than you do a nute plate). I can't get a good picture of it, but it's pretty damn cool looking.

Not sure why, but I've noticed my plates tend to condensate at night...I guess that has something to do with metabolic growth versus resting stages?? When I pulled these out for a look-see a few hours ago, no condensation. Tonight isn't the first time I've noticed. Neither here nor there, I suppose.
This guy also has some very informative info https://www.youtube.com/c/SouthwestMushrooms. He's all gourmet, but a lot of the general knowledge is universal. I actually have about 60/40 gourmet/cube at the moment. Only way I can grow cubes with family interaction...my 11yr old loves this shit as much as I do. I only grow 1 tub of cubes at a time and tell her they're backyard finds that I'm growing for practice, and don't EVER eat them b/c they're toxic (not necessarily a lie, so don't judge me!!!).
These are transfers from cakes; Warm Button and Shiitake...getting transferred to another water agar tomorrow before going to nutrient.
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HILLBILLY OUTLAWS: Before I first actually got started I bought and read like 5 different books on the subject and watched prob every you tube vid there is. Took it all in and filtered out what I thought either logically wouldn’t work and focused on what actually made sense. Didn’t find shroomery until right after my first grow was over. Would have been much easier if I stumbled upon this place about 9 months ago. Lol
Similar story here...I thought mushrooms grew in shit, so they had to be easy...had 4 grows gone bad before I registered. 
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Grind365: So I haven't finished the video yet but I had to come back here to ask is agar really pronounced auger? Edit: I also noticed he said more nutritious agar gives fast vigorous growth I know the opposite to be true what gives?
In TX, auger is an attachment to a tractor used to dig holes for fence posts and planting young trees. This dude's pronunciation of agg-ARE was like nails on a fucking chalkboard to me.
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san pedro guy: agg-R is how i say it in my head, never said it outloud 
Close, but you're missing the TX draw...agg-ARE
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zilker
No Entitlements Here


Registered: 05/25/22
Posts: 64
Loc: Texas
Last seen: 14 days, 22 hours
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Re: Let's talk about Water Agar!! 💧 [Re: Rotnpins] 1
#27917783 - 08/25/22 07:51 AM (1 year, 5 months ago) |
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I'll give credit where it's due.. I just left you a rating.. plus you made me smile 
Awwww, shucks...you're swell! Much appreciated! 
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As far as condensation goes, I'm curious, where we're those in your plate stacks? The top few plates of my stacks tend to have condensation
Ya know, I think they were toward the top. That makes complete sense b/c the metabolic heat doesn't get cooled prematurely by the air above it. I think I'll add the shielding plate to my list of weekend duties. Be a good use for the left over plates that get taken out of sterile packaging but not filled due to running out of auger (couldn't help it).
Edit - Moved plate progress to my 8/18 earlier post showing log
Edited by zilker (08/25/22 10:32 AM)
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zilker
No Entitlements Here


Registered: 05/25/22
Posts: 64
Loc: Texas
Last seen: 14 days, 22 hours
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Re: Let's talk about Water Agar!! 💧 [Re: Rotnpins] 2
#27924925 - 08/29/22 10:15 PM (1 year, 4 months ago) |
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The speed of growth on this shit is extremely fast. I currently have 4 "types" of mushrooms growing on WA, each using different methods; spores, substrate, and A2A transfers. Definitely a great clean up tool. When using, be prepared to transfer quickly, as some types & methods are very aggressive growers.
Of the 4 types I've used this with, gourmet seems to grow out faster than cubes. I know...super scientific with too many details to follow.
Believe it or not, it actually took me 45 minutes to write this post when I realized I'm all over the f'n place, deleted the nonsense, and settled with the KISS strategy.
Edited by zilker (08/29/22 11:23 PM)
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zilker
No Entitlements Here


Registered: 05/25/22
Posts: 64
Loc: Texas
Last seen: 14 days, 22 hours
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Re: Let's talk about Water Agar!! 💧 [Re: Cob] 2
#27941546 - 09/09/22 06:48 AM (1 year, 4 months ago) |
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I wondered about germinating spores on water agar. You've had luck with it you say?
I'm thinking of making my next batch WA and trying some spores out on it. All my current plates are growing pretty slow at 8g LME. Thought about dialing that back a little next time I make nutritious agar plates.
Yes. When Rotn first posted this thread, I ran a study with a nutritional plate and agar plate...it should be on page 2 of this thread. The spores were collected from a backyard find, and never intended for growing. When I found out they're an edible genus, Reddening Lepiota, I wanted to grow it.
Dumped some spores on both plates and the contam that developed on the nutrient plate eventually led to me throwing it out within a few days. The WA plate showed signs of growth in 18hrs. Granted, I've since noticed the Lepiota is a super aggressive grower, much like Blue Oyster, so I wouldn't expect the same timelines from a cube. However, I think it's safe to say you'd get favorable results fairly quickly.
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