MycCycle said:

nektar61 said:

Pic tax, Still Life with Flow Hood

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Is it .1% active charcoal you use with those plates? They look very black on my screen. I love it!

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To make 80 to 90 plates (if you want to make half as much, divide each ingredient by 2, etc):

--Start with 1.6 liter of distilled water.

I use Living Jin brand agar, but other types will work. Telephone brand is common in Asian food grocery stores or sections in bigger grocery stores. Don't use gelatin, is not the same thing. Though sometimes agar is called "vegetable gelatin" but make sure the only ingredient is agar (or "agar agar.")

I use Anthony's Activated Charcoal. But others will probably work.

Add:

--16 grams of dried potato flakes. (you can substitute malt extract, but I've had better results with potato)
--30 grams of powdered agar agar.
--24 grams of dextrose.
--15 grams powdered activated charcoal. (optional)

Black plates look goth as fuck, and also seems to get nicer looking mycelium than same mix without it, it may act as a nutrient. My plates got my rhizo after I started using it. It's carbon, and life needs and loves carbon. We are all just part of the carbon cycle, so are shrooms, and the grain we grow them on.

Tip for noobs: I don't recommend using other colors until you get very good at recognizing contams. Blue, green, etc make it harder to see contams. And the most common red food coloring is anti-fungal!

My whole agar tek: https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/27551422#27551422

They are very dark. Here's one after I cut out a bunch of transfer chunks

Huskies said:

....Has there ever been any tests with using antibacterial additives?...

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nektar61 said:

Huskies said:

....Has there ever been any tests with using antibacterial additives?...

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This reliably comes up every once in a while on here. I asked it early on. I've seen it in posts after I got here, and in posts well before I got here.

This isn't needed. It's very simple to get good technique with preparing / PCing / transferring and not have contam.

If you've got contam in a tub you probably had contam in the jar, or in the plate. Once you get to a full jar of clean spawn, it's very hard to be out competed in the tub.

You grow some really good tubs from what I remember, are you having contam issues? I didn't think you would.

Anyone having contam issues, read this start to finish,
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/27646632#27646632

It solves for several contam vectors some might not think of. Pay special attention to the fact that some coir for flower gardening has added fungus.

Even if it's advertised as "anti-fungal anti-bacterial, that may be (and probably is) because of the added "beneficial fungi", Trichoderma.

That is not harmful to plants but will ruin a shroom grow.

Trichoderma harzianum is a fungus that is also used as a fungicide. It is used for foliar application, seed treatment and soil treatment for suppression of fungal pathogens causing various fungal plant diseases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichoderma_harzianum

There is at least one TC here that will tell me I'm wrong on this but he's wrong.

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I can get good flushes, and I've had great tubs, but recently I've had lots of contamination issues despite what I think is very good agar prep. I do think I've been messing up with the g2g and agar to grain.

Like, this tub looks fantastic for natalensis, was over 1000g wet. Molded immediately after. All of my natalensis tubs did that, despite supposedly being able to " eat" trich.



I think on the agar level, I am safe, unless its sneaky bacteria that has been hitching along since the MS swab. I'll be doing the Josex poke to clean them up more.

On the grain level, the grain prep and sterilization I'm comfortable with, but I think I need to be less confident inside of the SAB, especially with g2g, which I am going to phase out and prepare LCs to pour.

I was using coir that sometimes sucked, it had sticks, stones, I found a piece of ribbon before. Despite everyone always sayings its the grain/agar, a bucket tek stick that went unnoticed in the coir seems like a vector of contamination for me. New stuff seems great.

I might try adding some black pepper in my next plates just as a test. Would be interesting to see if bacteria (from my mouth) has a hard time colonizing it versus a regular plate.

SupaThaRipper said:

Try sterilizing your substrate. Not pasteurizing but actually sterilizing.

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SupaThaRipper said:

If that doesn't work alone, then use MGP+ when spawning to bulk on sterilized sub.

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mist3rfortunate said:

I have some cultures and I'm hoping you guys can help me out here, tell me if I'm on the right track or if I should start some new germ plates.

Here I have some T1 from GT-MSS germ plates they've been growing over the last 3 weeks since transfer. I'm wondering if these are good?





I also have some T2 transfers I took from some of those above plates early on, they spread out a lot faster but more fluffy. Is this just "tomentose" or am I growing cobweb or some other fluffy mold?




I also took some transfers from a Corumba Brazil MSS germ plate and ended up with these, they don't look too promising.


Guidance or tips on any of this much appreciated
Agar is made with Milkboy PDA tek
All work done in front of FFU

I seem to only get fluffy growth or thin growth and not the bright white rhizo growth I see in other posts.

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mist3rfortunate said:

I have some cultures and I'm hoping you guys can help me out here, tell me if I'm on the right track or if I should start some new germ plates.

Here I have some T1 from GT-MSS germ plates they've been growing over the last 3 weeks since transfer. I'm wondering if these are good?





I also have some T2 transfers I took from some of those above plates early on, they spread out a lot faster but more fluffy. Is this just "tomentose" or am I growing cobweb or some other fluffy mold?




I also took some transfers from a Corumba Brazil MSS germ plate and ended up with these, they don't look too promising.


Guidance or tips on any of this much appreciated
Agar is made with Milkboy PDA tek
All work done in front of FFU

I seem to only get fluffy growth or thin growth and not the bright white rhizo growth I see in other posts.

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I see no obvious mold, but it's hard to tell with pix taken from the side like that. Taking better Petri dish and shroom grow photos

Third one down, GT1 has a little wet spot at 9 oclock that might be bacteria, or might be water condensation. Need a better picture. if it doesn't flow like water when plate is moved, is more likely bacteria.

As for "cobweb mold", an OG TC (Bod) said "it's never cobweb", and that he'd seen it 2x in 5 years.

It's kind of 3D and smokey looking, which yours does not appear to be. 

Pix of actual cobweb mold.

It's tomentose (Tommy toes) (lol) mycelium, as opposed to rhizo. Tommy tose is fine, can be just as strong. Rhizo just looks cooler, and is easier to tell from mold (which is usually tomotose."

Read the full tek in my sig line, this is from it (so is the picture tek I posted.)

"-Fluffy (tomentose) mycelium can be as good as rhizo (ropey). Rhizo just looks cool. Also, people like rhizo because it's easier to tell from fluffy mold. Our brains are trained by evolution to recoil from mold."

Pic tec, some rhizo:

nektar61 said:

I see no obvious mold, but it's hard to tell with pix taken from the side like that. [url=/forums/showflat.php/Number/27726375#27726375]Taking better Petri dish and shroom grow photos[/url

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I'll look into that one.
I'll give you an update on the x7x(+) and the Hens and Chicks sometime soon as well.

Nothing but I's, but be patient, I'm like fungi; takes time

SupaThaRipper said:

Sterilizing substrate hands down has given me better results than pasteurizing ever did. Fuck pasteurizing.

I've ran both methods thoroughly. Mgp+ is just icing to the cake. Have you ever sterilized your sub to experiment? Or are you just speaking what you've heard? Everything that has ever come out of my mouth I have tested myself to know if I can speak on it, unless I say otherwise.

Are you just running cubes? Or exotics that stick around for months and months, even over half a year straight on the same substrate without contaminating? Sterilizing is king to everything, always.

Bacteria in verm by itself? Show me.

Dude you realize how big the myco community is outside of the shroomery? Lol just because people using it are people you've never heard, doesn't mean it's not legitimate.

And to add. Just because YOU get away with pasteurizing, doesn't mean everyone will regardless if their technique is spot on. There's a million variables that come into play always. For the first half of my year growing last year, I got away with cold water sub hydration and zero pasteurizing or sterilizing and then all of sudden one day came trich. I went through ever scenario possible sorting it out and only sterilization worked. Think my spawn or agar is bad? Send me an address I will ship you some to look at it yourself.

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cronicr said:

K back in the day that all stemmed from RR preaching it like it was gospel
I issued 1000 dollar challenge that nobody ever accepted or at least succeeded with
Challenge was if a fruit could contain more than one strain it's should be easy enough to take two completely different mushrooms like a rustywhyte and a penis envy ...cross them and when you find that pe looking rustywhyte clone it and show the sectors ....now try separate it back to both lol 😂

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Quote:

“The main aim of this research is to collect and characterize the germplasm of two native wild strains from the Mexican Mixtec region. With this study, the authors also intend to promote the production of Pleurotus spp. fungi in Mexico. A chemical dedikaryotization process was used for the recovery of symmetrical monokaryotic components, where the compatible neohaplonts produced different types of hybrid strains. Morphology and mycelium growth rate characteristics were compared between native, neohaplonts and hybrid strains.”

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Quote:

Identification of neohaplonts’ compatibility types and production of reconstituted strains
To identify the two types of monokaryotic components, a neohaplont was randomly selected and mated on MEA plates with all remaining neohaplonts. Dikaryotic mycelium, characterized by the presence of clamp connections, was produced when two compatible neohaplonts were mated. With this approach, eight reconstituted strains were produced.

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https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6314949/

There is absolutely no argument available to support meristogenous formation of fruitbodies due to the requirement for compatible mating types to produce basidiocarp.

This is true for all basidiocarp forming species (edit: excluding asexual mating species) including cubes. Each recovered parental neohaplont will be comprised of 2 other parental haplonts making even the simplest of strains symphogenous. Aslo, sectoring doesn't really = anything significant.

The very fact that mating needs to occur and the differences in mating types exist, all fruit bodies must by definition contain multiple strains. One cannot reduce the number of strains, one cannot select individual mated stains or isolate monokaryotic strains with a scalpel or any other tool.

Single strain isolation can only be achieved by dedikaryotization or a combo of serial dilution and manipulation of individually germed monokaryons with microscopy with micromanipulators.

Where do I collect my coin? Lol  JK. Ol uncle stipe does this shit for free....

But I would appreciate it if Y'all subscribed to my YouTube channel linked in my sig.

cronicr said:

K back in the day that all stemmed from RR preaching it like it was gospel
I issued 1000 dollar challenge that nobody ever accepted or at least succeeded with
Challenge was if a fruit could contain more than one strain it's should be easy enough to take two completely different mushrooms like a rustywhyte and a penis envy ...cross them and when you find that pe looking rustywhyte clone it and show the sectors ....now try separate it back to both lol 😂

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Quote:

Stipe-n Cap said:...sectoring doesn't really = anything significant.....

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don.rumata said:

One of my plates of GT on LME, 10 days of growth. Judging by other pictures I think this is ready to clone to another plate of agar. My question to ask is, is all this growth good or is part of it mold? Also check that worm thing in the middle

My apologies for the photo quality, I am new and getting used to photographing agar.

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all looks clean nice work. the inside spot, outter edge at 630ish is the only spot i dont like. i would transfer from 4 oclock. that looks best IMO. hang onto the germination plate though for a while and watch that worm thing. idk what that is lol

also its called transferring when working from spore. not cloning. cloning is a sample taken from a fruitbody and cleaning it up on agar, regardless of how many transfers.

Stipe-n Cap said:

"Buncha of smart shit"

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I feel like I just hit the gym lol, thanks for the input Stipe

BullRun just about to leap