Harpo67 said:

I am hydrating some coir as I type this. Will I need both quarts of grain spawn for this 20 quart bin? Pretty sure I need 3 to 1 and 4 quarts seems like it would be pretty close to covering bottom up to the holes.

Wouldn't mind a link to a tek to eventually fruit in this 20 quart bin. Advice is appreciated.

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Mr Piggy said:

I feel you, I’m typically camp cook too.  I’m often the first to tag out so I try to make sure buddies come back to a clean camp and hot food.

Weird the random correlation between being the earliest to get up (4am) and being the first to tag out.  Too bad it’s completely random and we’ll never know.

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ThurmanMurman said:

This is at least the 2nd time I've seen "ratios don't matter". I guess I dont see the logic here, since more coir = more water = better yield (to the point that water is the bottleneck anyway).

Is it becoming popular to run higher spawn ratios and calling it good enough? I typically run 1:4, but I've wondered too if running higher spawn and then bottom watering once the sub has shrunken some would achieve the same outcome...

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Harpo67 said:

I am hydrating some coir as I type this. Will I need both quarts of grain spawn for this 20 quart bin? Pretty sure I need 3 to 1 and 4 quarts seems like it would be pretty close to covering bottom up to the holes.

Wouldn't mind a link to a tek to eventually fruit in this 20 quart bin. Advice is appreciated.

---

ElGringoGrande said:

@Axman and @AZ I use the celltreat 100mmx15mm plates from Amazon cuz I heard good reviews on here. Should be sterile. I also open each sleeve inside the sab.

I do get a lot of condensation in my plates. I wait until 125f to pour but still haven’t been able to get rid of it. I’ve tried a hot pot of water on the top of the stack too but there was condensation on the side walls of the plates. This batch I didn’t worry about that and just left the stack to cool with nothing on top.

I did save some uninoculated plates and they have some specks too. Not as many though, so maybe it’s happening during inoculation. The spots are evenly spaced across the surface of the agar though. I would think that contams from inoculation would be centered around contact points or one edge of the plate where the scalpel went over to drop the wedge.

I was using Bods videos as a reference, but couldn’t really see when or how he was spraying the inside of the sab with soap water. What is the recommended strategy for that?

I ended up bringing all my stuff into the sab while the bottle was cooling, wiping with iso as I bring in, and then spraying the walls with soap water once everything was inside. Then left everything in there until time to pour, about 30 mins or so after spraying. I did not re-spray between pouring and inoculating.

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ElGringoGrande said:

Yo does anyone have an explanation or link to one about why we are supposed to put foil over lids of things in the pressure cooker?

I’m specifically looking at agar in a 500 ml media bottle. I poured agar a week ago and was very careful with pouring in my SAB, followed Bod’s videos to a t, closed all windows and turned off all fans/ac and hour before pouring, showered ~30 mins before.

All the plates are contammed, they look like little drops evenly dispersed across the surface of the agar, clear but I can see thin trails leading out of the drops so probably bacteria (sorry no pics rn, I’ll post later).

The only thing I can think is that I didn’t cover the lid of the bottle during sterilization, just left the lid slightly unscrewed, so I’m trying to track down what went wrong. Could leaving the lid uncovered lead to contams? Or was I just not careful enough with pouring?

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I cover it so there is an extra layer between the sterile bottle and the dirty world.  I take the foil off after I place the media bottle in my SAB.  I don’t want any lil microbe bits drifting onto the neck of my bottle before I IHOP an entire stack

ThurmanMurman said:

This is at least the 2nd time I've seen "ratios don't matter". I guess I dont see the logic here, since more coir = more water = better yield (to the point that water is the bottleneck anyway).

Is it becoming popular to run higher spawn ratios and calling it good enough? I typically run 1:4, but I've wondered too if running higher spawn and then bottom watering once the sub has shrunken some would achieve the same outcome...

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mushboy said:

mushroom farms do super low ratios hence the supplementation and jive.

i wanna say its like 1:20 ratio or something like that i could be wrong on that number

we do super high spawn ratios for ...reasons?

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Smellyhobbit said:

ThurmanMurman said:

This is at least the 2nd time I've seen "ratios don't matter". I guess I dont see the logic here, since more coir = more water = better yield (to the point that water is the bottleneck anyway).

Is it becoming popular to run higher spawn ratios and calling it good enough? I typically run 1:4, but I've wondered too if running higher spawn and then bottom watering once the sub has shrunken some would achieve the same outcome...

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You really got to consider your goals here. Imo, 1:3 is like the optimal ratio. 1:3 + top layer, which some consider 1:4. I’d call it 1:4 with no top layer. This is optimal at least for shoeboxes. It gives pretty much any cube culture the water to give you everything in flush 1 with an option for a good rehydrated flush 2, but you can also toss it after without issue.

Colonization time and risk mitigation are both good as well.

1:2 can also give you a full flush 1, but at that point I’m definitely tossing after because the second flush isn’t worth the space in my cabinet.

Now if you’re running big, deep tubs maybe you can consider higher ratios, but for us shoeboxers I really don’t see a point, personally.

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Mr Piggy said:

Prepped coir can sit around for a while

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if the coir sits for too long it turns back into coconut husks


true story

Smellyhobbit said:

You can. The cultures I grow usually give 28-35g dry first flush and then something like 7g dry second flush. I personally would rather start a new project instead. There’s no reason not to rehydrate a 1:2 tub and let it give you multiple flushes if that’s what you’re interested in doing. The problem with 1:2 is that I could just do 1:3 and be done with it. I feel like a rehydrated 1:2 is just giving you what you could have gotten on a first flush 1:3.

There isn’t really a wrong answer with clean spawn. Just depends on what you’re interested in. I turn and burn because I’m working on learning new species and cubes take up space after their first flush for not a lot of return.

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Mr Piggy said:

Harpo67 said:

I am hydrating some coir as I type this. Will I need both quarts of grain spawn for this 20 quart bin? Pretty sure I need 3 to 1 and 4 quarts seems like it would be pretty close to covering bottom up to the holes.

Wouldn't mind a link to a tek to eventually fruit in this 20 quart bin. Advice is appreciated.

---

You’re overthinking it.  Just dump those two quarts in and fill with coir until you’re just below those holes, mix that all up, and put a psudocasing of about 1/2 inch of pure coir on top of that.  Lightly tamp and compress the whole mix, then level the surface.  Done.

Just prep coir using the link I already provided you.  Prepped coir can sit around for a while, so making too much is better than too little.  Plus coir is cheap so you don’t really have to hoard leftover like gold.

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ElGringoGrande said:

@Axman and @AZ I use the celltreat 100mmx15mm plates from Amazon cuz I heard good reviews on here. Should be sterile. I also open each sleeve inside the sab.

I do get a lot of condensation in my plates. I wait until 125f to pour but still haven’t been able to get rid of it. I’ve tried a hot pot of water on the top of the stack too but there was condensation on the side walls of the plates. This batch I didn’t worry about that and just left the stack to cool with nothing on top.

I did save some uninoculated plates and they have some specks too. Not as many though, so maybe it’s happening during inoculation. The spots are evenly spaced across the surface of the agar though. I would think that contams from inoculation would be centered around contact points or one edge of the plate where the scalpel went over to drop the wedge.

I was using Bods videos as a reference, but couldn’t really see when or how he was spraying the inside of the sab with soap water. What is the recommended strategy for that?

I ended up bringing all my stuff into the sab while the bottle was cooling, wiping with iso as I bring in, and then spraying the walls with soap water once everything was inside. Then left everything in there until time to pour, about 30 mins or so after spraying. I did not re-spray between pouring and inoculating.

---

Harpo67 said:

Mr Piggy said:

Harpo67 said:

I am hydrating some coir as I type this. Will I need both quarts of grain spawn for this 20 quart bin? Pretty sure I need 3 to 1 and 4 quarts seems like it would be pretty close to covering bottom up to the holes.

Wouldn't mind a link to a tek to eventually fruit in this 20 quart bin. Advice is appreciated.

---

You’re overthinking it.  Just dump those two quarts in and fill with coir until you’re just below those holes, mix that all up, and put a psudocasing of about 1/2 inch of pure coir on top of that.  Lightly tamp and compress the whole mix, then level the surface.  Done.

Just prep coir using the link I already provided you.  Prepped coir can sit around for a while, so making too much is better than too little.  Plus coir is cheap so you don’t really have to hoard leftover like gold.

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Should I block holes while colonizing?

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