hazyhorse said:

god damn, hobbit! thanks for the side by side pics. i had been wondering about yeast for awhile since i see it in so many recipes. many of my plates look like those t3 plates. seems to have made a huge difference in the look

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hazyhorse said:

it just looks so much nicer with the yeast in it! clearly it’s happy. where did you get your yeast at? i may pick some up next time i’m out if it’s convenient

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hazyhorse said:

baked might have more reasoning to go with it but a big part is probably that BRF is more useful for cleaning up bacteria & contams or for germinating spores than it is as an agar substitute if you’re already getting solid growth on an agar plate. but BRF will pin really readily if you leave it long enough because of the nutrition (plates will also pin but can take a long time ime) so you can get good clone candidates that will presumably be sterile & can let caps open up to get a few prints that will have a clean edge over fruits that were fruited out in the open vs. in vitro

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Smellyhobbit said:

col_sandwich said:

Beginner here who just poured their first agar cups a couple of nights ago. All the info and encouragement here to not fear and get into agar has been super helpful. I used Philly Golden Teacher's agar recipe and poured into condiment cups using oven tek. Gotta start somewhere! I poured too hot, which I imagine is a common beginner mistake. Condensation obscures vision on most of the cups. Lessons learned. Thanks for helping to give folks the information and confidence to experiment with this stuff!

I poured 12. I'm looking forward to see if some/any survive the 5 day period to  see if they're good to be used. And if not, I'll just try again!

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Awesome! Starting off with agar is great. I’ve never done the oven pour, so keep us posted on contam rates. Expecting a non-zero number, but I don’t know what it will be. I imagine pouring hot is only helpful when working outside a SAB or flow hood.

I guess that means you are without a pressure cooker?

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To update: All 12 plates I poured were contam free (?!?). This is particularly stunning in one case, where as I was pouring I couldn't get the top on one right and moved it off to the side on the counter to continue working with the lid just laying on top. It wasn't until several minutes later when I was done and went back to it did I get the top on right and figured, 'what the hell, let's see what happens'. A surprising and very pleasing result.

Took MSS syringe and squirted a bit into a shot glass. Used one swab per plate, dip into shot glass then to swab 6 plates. 5-plus days later, 4 of the plates grew nice mycelium





1 plate grew nice mycelium but also had a spot of bacteria. There was enough room to have taken samples from likely safe areas, but I felt like I had other, cleaner plates with which to work so didn't bother. 1 plate I'm pretty sure was taken over by mold. Pretty much the entire surface now is white fuzz, it started and is mostly concentrated on the side of the plate, in an area that was not swabbed. So those two are just getting tossed.

Just used a butane torch and hobby knife to transfer 6 samples from the 4 good plates to the 6 remaining clean plates. New plates have been poured, this time using the SAB and not oven tek. Still got a few days to see how those turn out overall. Poured 16 of those.

So now we're on to the next step of seeing how good my technique was and how the 6 transfers go. I feel like I'll need a lot more reps of that before I'm really comfortable doing it and have a good workflow. Hopefully at least one will be nice and clean. We'll see!

Smellyhobbit said:

Very safe to say my cultures are enjoying the added gram of nutritional yeast I put in my plates.
...

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If the dates are correct - looks like very speedy growth! I might have missed it, what is the full agar recipe that you are using? Also what temperature and lighting are you storing the plates in?

As for me, the T0 plates seem to be coming along with some non-translucent mycelium now at least. Very fluffy and not at all stringy like some other pics in the forum here.

Compared to 2022-10-17:

Some T1 transfers (2 days in):

Results of being anxious of not seeing germination so scratching up a plate, smearing spores all over:
(not sure what I will be doing with this one)
And seemingly no contams anywhere yet!

rumfor69 said:

Red dye #3 Erythrosine = bad

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