Psybanana said:

for those who have experience with long-term storage of plins in cryovials with sterile water: it's normal for them to turn completly black? - thought this kind of oxidation would need oxigen... starting to doubt if the cryovials are air sealed...

---

Black would be extremely suspect for agar wedges, but I've never tried it with pins. On wedges, the mycelium stays perfectly white.

But aborted pins tend to turn black.

Any reason you want pins from agar plates rather than vegetative mycelium?

ThurmanMurman said:

I had a really hard time getting my camera to focus, but I'll try again.

---

Disorganized Growth generally is another type of mold. Cubensis mycelium is usually very uniform unless there is a contaminant riding along, bacterial or fungal.

Wispy, tomentose growth doesn’t always signify a contaminant and could very well be due to agar recipe and the amount of readily accessible nutrients.

Lower your nutrient content in order to force a different morphology. Lower nutrient content  in your agar will usually look more rhizo as the organism/mycelium is searching for the food in order to sustain itself and colonize more rapidly in order to consume and complete its life cycle.

Here are some pictures to compare and begin to better train your eyes for what to look for:

I suspect these look kind of strange in the caps due to bacteria. Does anyone know whether this suggests anything beyond the aesthetic? Would you expect it to have any effect on potency?

GenesisCorrupted said:

I’m looking at perfectly healthy mushrooms. What am I supposed to see that’s wrong?

---

TheAtlantean said:

ThurmanMurman said:

I had a really hard time getting my camera to focus, but I'll try again.

---

Disorganized Growth generally is another type of mold. Cubensis mycelium is usually very uniform unless there is a contaminant riding along, bacterial or fungal.

Wispy, tomentose growth doesn’t always signify a contaminant and could very well be due to agar recipe and the amount of readily accessible nutrients.

Lower your nutrient content in order to force a different morphology. Lower nutrient content  in your agar will usually look more rhizo as the organism/mycelium is searching for the food in order to sustain itself and colonize more rapidly in order to consume and complete its life cycle.

Here are some pictures to compare and begin to better train your eyes for what to look for:

---