Kloakk said:

Grain water is fine, I've done 50/50 grain water/ plain water and 25/75 grain water/plain, both worked okay. Try the DME(dry malt extract) next run and see what you prefer

And again try storing you plates standing up at an angle and see if you get bacterial runs.

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Sick thanks for the reassurance and for the tip on storing the plates vertically, that's a pretty cool way to get bacteria to do something differentiable. We shall wait and see. Really hoping at least one of these shakti plates does something, they look soo cool. Definitely having fun with agar so far.

bluescreen said:

I really like grain water agar, just don't like not knowing what the actual nute concentration is. But then my go-to agar is Milkboy's PDA and I'm not sure there either but it works great and is crystal clear (and I'm a potato).

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Agree, grain water is pretty sweet, only tried wheat. I'm still on the fence though because I've only done 2 GW pours(60 plates), my pans moved really fast, cubes looked a little thin but still did the thing fine.

I just made a batch of 1% DME plates with 0,2% nutritional yeast and will use 50/50 GW/plain with 0,2% nutritional yeast next time I do grains and compare different species on the different plates and see how it turns out.

With GW plates I need to plan ahead if I want clear plates, so will see what I'll settle with.

Aaaanyway Point being nutrient value doesn't matter if the plates looks good and the mycelium is happy.

fontinalis666 said:

Sick thanks for the reassurance and for the tip on storing the plates vertically, that's a pretty cool way to get bacteria to do something differentiable. We shall wait and see. Really hoping at least one of these shakti plates does something, they look soo cool. Definitely having fun with agar so far.

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fontinalis666 said:

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The Door said:

#2


#6

Awfullotofshrooms said:

Nice, get your next plates ready for transfers.

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Plates are ready to go. Should I do transfers now? Which plates? I was thinking #2 and #6...

I've read some TCs mention for initial transfers, not to let it grow out too much. Thoughts?

Mad Season said:

For initial transfers, don't let it grow out too much.

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jcm4620 said:

il streak a plate then il transfer the germination points i want to new plates to let them grow out about the size of a nickle or a qtr. then il take a cpl transfers from there to new plates and let them grow out to about the size of a qtr.

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Rasmodius said:

fontinalis666 said:

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This is the most naturally challenging kind of plate to diagnose IMO, because it's in that "kiiiiinda" state where it could go a lot of ways and the best move is to let it play out a little longer and see.

I chased down some of those wispy outer rings awhile back and was originally so sure that there was a wispy mold chasing me across tons of plates and solid technique, but with another week, they fluffed up into normal (if a bit tomentose) mycelium.

5 to 6 PM on that first plate does look like there's a thin slightly cloudy cluster overtop of the mycelium. Photos can be hard (glare can do weird things, myc strands can be blurred by the camera into looking like one cloudy mass, etc), but anything that's in the "thin mass of mucus-like jelly" is gonna be bact. +1 on kloakk's vertical tip.

Keep an eye on it, if you have other plates ready and feel good about your SAB stillness, you could just snag a sample from the opposite side of the plate and perhaps not have to do cabin work.

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for swabs a slice (if you literally cut it) is a bit unusual and I'd mostly worry about contam from the cutting instrument (if more than the flame sterilized tip touched the swab etc). But anything goes for getting it on there, it's common to literally jam the whole swab in there and leave it sticking out like a flagpole (though that consumes the whole swab).

The approach I'd recommend is tweezers, narrower the better. They're easy to flame sterilize and you can snip a few strands with visible spores from the swab and place them on the agar, which keeps agar off the swab and also preserves a lot of material for future attempts.

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glad to hear you're gonna wait on it for a bit, good move imo

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Super appreciate the in-depth response 🙏 thank you. And yeah, I literally took the scalpel and got 5 little "fillets" off of the swab lol. I'm assuming the swab was made via swabbing a fresh fruit, as there were gill fragments on it, and it definitely had a texture that suggested it had been wet and then dried out, so the outside of the swab was almost like a skin/film if you will, which made the filleting easier tbh. But I really like the tweezer suggestion, if I ever work with swabs again I'll definitely go that route. Nothing is seeming to be overtly bacterial somehow, though the plates look a little crazy, im guessing from the giant mixed bag of genetics going on. But I decided to make some transfers tonight, as some of the plates were starting to develop areas of nice looking rhizo growth, well see what happens!


Was particularly proud of how clean this transfer went/looks


Tried my hand at a cabin for the fuck of it, shits kinda hard lol