nobutreally said:

Are these grain jars looking viable so far?

I'm just getting into this and, well, went ahead and made most of the typical rookie mistakes. These jars are syringe to grain but I'm not seeing anything obviously horrifying (yet). These are the two jars with the most growth but I have a few more that are showing signs of life.




Both jars seem a bit wet, the one on the right has quite a bit more condensation which is focused right above the growth (the other side of the jar has nearly none) and the growth in the left jar seems really dense in comparison. I'm goobering my way through figuring out how to not contaminate the hell out of agar plates to slightly increase my odds of cultivating some clean spawn so I'm just hoping these are viable enough to get something while I work towards being more gooder.

Didn't realize how lousy the picture was until now, lol

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Nichrome said:

Smellyhobbit said:

So I’ve got like triple the amount of tubs in my grow space as usual and the substrate wont stop sweating.

Is this just going to be as issue with that many tubs? Any way to mitigate all the water pooling up around the edges? Having warm pools of water has been causing a lot of bacterial jelly to form, and in some cases it’s been bad enough to stunt growth.

Should I just not stack tubs? Grow less?

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More tubs is more heat and need for oxygen. Cubes can handle the co2 but they need a lot of oxygen especially when they are considering fruiting.

Try cutting a hole or two in the back and installing a computer fan or two to get some air movement. It sounds like a little drying action might help anyway. small exhaust up high and a passive hole down low to let it in.

That's a lot of biomass cooped up in a small space.

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Bobgas said:

I had a SFD that was rtv'd onto a plastic lid come off in the dishwasher.  First that has happened.  It looked like the rtv, which stuck to the sfd, had a good even spread. 

Makes me wonder whether there really is an air tight seal created by rtv.

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Bobgas said:

I had a SFD that was rtv'd onto a plastic lid come off in the dishwasher.  First that has happened.  It looked like the rtv, which stuck to the sfd, had a good even spread. 

Makes me wonder whether there really is an air tight seal created by rtv.

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SupaThaRipper said:

Is the sole reason of shaking grain spawn just because everyone is impatient. Or is it also important for speedy colonization to outrun potential bacteria?

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GenesisCorrupted said:

I just did this last night on a couple of my jars. The growth just seemed a little slow. I figured if I break it into lots of smaller pieces it would have more points of contact and it would spread out faster. The jars are sanitized so I don’t really worry about contamination.
I figure I would’ve seen it by now if there was going to be some.

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mycosispeon said:

In terms of sub-to-spawn ratio, is the sub used for casing generally included in that, or no?

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chris77 said:

SupaThaRipper said:

Is the sole reason of shaking grain spawn just because everyone is impatient. Or is it also important for speedy colonization to outrun potential bacteria?

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both, and also some mycelium (lions mane for example) will start fruiting even before 100% colonisation is reached, which is less favourable for fruiting.
cubensis is less problematic in this sense and you can get perfectly ok jars without shaking them.
but why wouldn’t you?

properly sterilised grains will not contaminate for a very long time or not at all. improper sterilisation is the biggest and most frequent vector for failure.

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chris77 said:

mycosispeon said:

In terms of sub-to-spawn ratio, is the sub used for casing generally included in that, or no?

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no

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SupaThaRipper said:

Have you tested this theory personally without shaking? If I’m running 300+ jars, I don’t really feel like shaking. Thats a lot of work. But I’ve noticed my success rate significantly higher if I do shake. 🧐

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elasticaltiger said:

Bobgas said:

I had a SFD that was rtv'd onto a plastic lid come off in the dishwasher.  First that has happened.  It looked like the rtv, which stuck to the sfd, had a good even spread. 

Makes me wonder whether there really is an air tight seal created by rtv.

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Bobgas said:

I had a SFD that was rtv'd onto a plastic lid come off in the dishwasher.  First that has happened.  It looked like the rtv, which stuck to the sfd, had a good even spread. 

Makes me wonder whether there really is an air tight seal created by rtv.

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Technically not a question in there but SFDs that have been RTVd to a lid can absolutely lose adhesion over time.

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elasticaltiger said:

chris77 said:

SupaThaRipper said:

Is the sole reason of shaking grain spawn just because everyone is impatient. Or is it also important for speedy colonization to outrun potential bacteria?

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both, and also some mycelium (lions mane for example) will start fruiting even before 100% colonisation is reached, which is less favourable for fruiting.
cubensis is less problematic in this sense and you can get perfectly ok jars without shaking them.
but why wouldn’t you?

properly sterilised grains will not contaminate for a very long time or not at all. improper sterilisation is the biggest and most frequent vector for failure.

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I tend to agree on this but I think people do a lot of funky stuff with their lid setups, their asceptic technique, and their agar practices, that lead to contamination as well.

If improper sterilization of the grains was the issue I'd be telling more people to increase their PC times. Which I do tell people. But probably more lile 30% of the time.

Also when breaking up your jars, try not to do more than 10 or so at a time by slapping the jar against your free hand.

One day I did like 40 jars this way and the next morning I woke up and I literally thought I had broken my wrist it was in so much pain.

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my success rate has greatly improved since i have upped pc time.
i am not using a presto but an ordinary PC without gauge.

and personally i never tap against my hand.
i break up jars holding them lid facing down (which makes sense to me ) and tapping them against my upper leg (i am into sport, so no risk of hurting my bones there

SupaThaRipper said:

I’ve ran jars all the way from 1 hour to 4 hours at 15-17 psi. I’ve had jars perfectly colonize plenty of times without shaking as well. But the results are MUCH better when shaking under the same sterilization techniques.

I’ve been testing this out a lot over the past few months, with over 300 lbs of dry grains and several different types of filters and unmoded lids too

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