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Is it mold or myc?
    #29709841 -

First grow and I may be learning the hard way but I wanted to check here first. I just spawned a mono yesterday and put a casing layer on it and today I may have contamination :/.


The above sub came in a kit with GS and I've had it since late Aug. I had that bag of sub warm for 5-6 weeks and then thought maybe I'd better remove it from the warm area and it remained low 60s for a couple of weeks. I brought it back up to similar temp as the GS for a few days and then spawned it. The sub remained sealed the entire time before spawning.
I sprayed the mono with iso but my dumbass forgot to hit my gloves and I didn't do the liner. Spawning env was in open air (I heard it could be done outside of a SAB) w/o the HVAC on for at least 30 min.
I'm pretty sure all of the grains were covered by the casing and I don't like what I'm seeing on the surface and wondering if anything can be done about it.

I also decided to try my hand at cloning on agar with a store bought shitake. So far the other empty plates look clean. In a SAB with sterilized forceps I iso'd my gloved hands and tools. I tore the shitake down the middle and plucked a tissue sample and carefully dropped it on the plate. This was completed on 10/20 and the pic below is from this morning. I've never done this so I'm not certain if this plate has myc or mold. I did put LC on another plate and that one def looks like myc. I performed the same cloning steps on a store miatake in the same event and that one shows next to no change. Just wondering if the team here has any input on what I'm dealing with.


Here are my three plates. I put a few drops of LC on the left plate in three spots. All plates were stored upside down so I'm not sure if the spot on the LC plate's lid is mold or if LC got up there.



Oh, last thing: The mono kit came with an air pump with small filter patch on the bottom. I have it mounted on top of a medium sized food storage container completely filled with poly and has holes drilled into the bottom so ingested air by the pump must pass through that little filter and a lot of poly. The stone diffuser is on the inside of the mono.


--------------------
THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE SHROOMERY

Edited by quest4answers (10/27/26 04:39 PM)

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: quest4answers]
    #29709971 -

Hi! Check out my signature for latest up to date info. Spraying your tub with iso likely didn't do any good and air pumps or heaters (and other devices) are not used for monos unless rarely if you're growing something exotic. What's your agar recipe? It looks very orange.

Good luck!

Edit: if you sprayed your mono before mixing spawn and hydrated coir then that's not a problem, but isn't necessary. You can wash it with soap and water if you want to be on the safer side

Edit2: I see tou mention taking a sample out the store bought shitaake and transfering it onto agar, but what LC are you talking about? You made it yourself?


--------------------
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Shroomery

Edited by Blueberry Muffin (10/27/26 04:48 PM)

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: Blueberry Muffin]
    #29710012 -

The mono kit came with the air pump as an automated FAE solution.
I used Milkboy's agar recipe with a few drops of red food coloring. It was potato flakes, peptone, agar powder, and karo. So far the 7 empty plates appear contam free.

The mono was completely empty and it got sprayed and wiped with iso before anything went into it. I installed the provided liner which had remained folded and stored with the other kit components and then the sub and GS got mixed in. My gloved hands were nicely covered in sub when I realized I forgot to spray them with iso.
After it was mixed nicely I cased it which was probably 0.5" - <1.0" and gently smoothed and pressed it flat but I did not compact it with great force; pat smooth.

I didn't think I had any grains in the casing layer but I guess it could have happened. And I was surprised at seeing something on that surface w/in a day of spawning the tub which had me concerned.

As for the LC, I bought some syringes and used one for this mono, one for an AIO bag, and stored the other one. So I grabbed the blue magnolia syringe and put about 6 drops in three locations on that one plate. Most of it looks good but I did notice something on the plate's lid that I'm not sure about.

I figured with the clones I'd just see what happens.


--------------------
THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE SHROOMERY

Edited by quest4answers (10/27/26 05:23 PM)

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: quest4answers]
    #29710233 -

The problem sounds like contaminated spawn.


--------------------
Agar Plates and Removing Hidden Contaminants - A Visual Notebook
Recognizing Contamination in Grain Jars - A Visual Notebook
Contaminated Condiment Cup Cleanup v1.0

Green Cap Pheno Isolation

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: quest4answers]
    #29710234 -

What's on the top of the plate is mold or bacterial growth. Unfortunately there are many vendors who sell over priced tubs with unnecessary gadgets( for growing cubes that is) you'll want to unplug any gadgetry connected. It will only harm the grow.

I suggest taking transfers of the blue magnolia to an Island to help clean them up as much as possible.

For an idea of what the ideal monotub should look like, give this a Read

For questions related to gourmet cultivation, here is a link that should get you faster more accurate Answers

Thanks for signing on and sharing what you've got growing. We are gonna help you grow more mushrooms than you know what to do with:camping:

Edited by Agar Wedge (10/28/26 12:07 AM)

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: DV8DUG]
    #29710497 -

DV8DUG said:
The problem sounds like contaminated spawn.


After similar results as above, I ran a test on two mini tubs, one with 1:1 spawn:coir cased in pasteurised coir, the other with just the same batch of coir, nothing else.

The grain version got trich, the other is still clean. One conclusion (most likely) is the spawn did it, but what are the chances of the coir having spores that needed nutrients to grow?

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: farmer88] * 1
    #29710503 -

Coir is an inert growing medium that contains no natural bionutrients and acts as a blank slate for plant cultivation.

Although many of us have experienced dirty coir the majority will never have this issue and should treat coir as inert.

My own experiments concluded that hydrated coir remained clean in a bucket for 2 years and this same coir fruited mushrooms.

This was around a year ago and the coir was already stored for a year prior, I dumped the coir onto my compost heap to buffer my soil however it looked identical to the day it was hydrated.

Previously I left a wooden spoon in the same bucket and it got mold on the handle but the mold didn't spread to the coir either, just molded the wood handle.

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: DERRAYLD]
    #29710506 -

DERRAYLD said:
Coir is an inert growing medium that contains no natural bionutrients and acts as a blank slate for plant cultivation.

Although many of us have experienced dirty coir the majority will never have this issue and should treat coir as inert.

My own experiments concluded that hydrated coir remained clean in a bucket for 2 years and this same coir fruited mushrooms.

This was around a year ago and the coir was already stored for a year prior, I dumped the coir onto my compost heap to buffer my soil however it looked identical to the day it was hydrated.

Previously I left a wooden spoon in the same bucket and it got mold on the handle but the mold didn't spread to the coir either, just molded the wood handle.


Thanks.

I understand it is inert, but my question was about it carrying spores that needed nutrients to sprout. Seems plausible, after all, when uncovered, it would collect spores from the air.

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: farmer88]
    #29710509 -

As stated, coir that was exposed multiple times to the environment across the course of 2 years never contaminated even in the presence of a moldy wooden spoon.

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: DERRAYLD]
    #29710512 -

I've also had coir sitting around in a tub for 16 months. No issues, worked fine. Gave nice flushes of ochras. 99/100 it is bad spawn, maybe even 999/1000.

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: farmer88] * 1
    #29710513 -

farmer88 said:
Thanks.

I understand it is inert, but my question was about it carrying spores that needed nutrients to sprout. Seems plausible, after all, when uncovered, it would collect spores from the air.


Sure, coir will have lots of spores, one uncolonized or bacterial grain and a spore is all it takes for an agressive contamination to get a foothold, then again so does the open air we spawn in :strokebeard:


--------------------
“All Fungi are edible.

Some fungi are only edible once.”
― Terry Pratchett


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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: DERRAYLD]
    #29710514 -

DERRAYLD said:
As stated, coir that was exposed multiple times to the environment across the course of 2 years never contaminated even in the presence of a moldy wooden spoon.


I didn't explain the question clearly enough.

If clean spawn is mixed with inert coir that carried mold spores, the spawn would be affected right?

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: farmer88]
    #29710517 -

Yeah, but like Kloakk said, spawn will be affected the moment you expose it to open air, but it shouldn’t matter if it’s healthy and fully colonized.

Edit. Or well couldn’t actually say that its affected in that case, but I hope the point came across.

The experiment comparing the spawn+coir vs just coir, could have maybe benefited from a just spawn variant. Though I’m not sure if it would have just dried out or also triched out. Out of my knowledge base. :shrug:

Edited by eilauver (10/28/26 05:17 AM)

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: eilauver]
    #29710518 -

eilauver said:
Yeah, but like Kloakk said,spawn will be affected the moment you expose it to open air, but it shouldn’t matter if it’s healthy and fully colonized.


Ok.

Just chasing contam source. Looks like it's dirty spawn and recent agar tests look like confirming that.

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: eilauver] * 1
    #29710519 -

What you're missing here is that fully colonized grain is resistant to outside contaminations. So no.


--------------------
Agar Plates and Removing Hidden Contaminants - A Visual Notebook
Recognizing Contamination in Grain Jars - A Visual Notebook
Contaminated Condiment Cup Cleanup v1.0

Green Cap Pheno Isolation

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: Agar Wedge]
    #29711036 -

Agar Wedge said:
What's on the top of the plate is mold or bacterial growth. Unfortunately there are many vendors who sell over priced tubs with unnecessary gadgets( for growing cubes that is) you'll want to unplug any gadgetry connected. It will only harm the grow.

I suggest taking transfers of the blue magnolia to an Island to help clean them up as much as possible.

For an idea of what the ideal monotub should look like, give this a Read

For questions related to gourmet cultivation, here is a link that should get you faster more accurate Answers

Thanks for signing on and sharing what you've got growing. We are gonna help you grow more mushrooms than you know what to do with:camping:


First, thank you to this community for your help and commitment!

I'll keep the mono setup simple going forward and I'll see about isolating the blue mag from that plate.

I was optimistically naive about not encountering contam my first go out. I'll be better about sanitation, etc. moving forward.

Is there anything to be done about that growth on the substrate?
I was thinking of trying to work in a SAB to extract the contaminated sub with a sterile spoon. I suppose if I've got contamination now how much worse can it get? If I let it go I'm sure it'll spread. I've got some H2O2 and wondered what y'all think about trying it as a cleanup step. I guess I'm just wondering if this is a definite toss (in which I've got nothing to lose trying to correct it) or if there are other YMMV ways of dealing with this. I've seen some hacked up cakes that get saved but I'm nowhere near having a colonized cake.

I hear mode spores are resilient and a bitch to eradicate. I'm not TOO concerned about H2O2 or iso on the sub since the myc has been in it for ~2 days and probably hasn't made much progress. I'd rather a smaller yield than none at all. YOLO on this one?

I've got grain, jars, PC, and LC so I could get another strain going. Just seeing if I can get something out of this 2-month wait. Thanks again!


--------------------
THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE SHROOMERY

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: quest4answers]
    #29711145 -

No gadgets, liner not needed. If you don't have fae holes then flip the lid and for more fae you can rotate it a bit and-or put a little something between the lid at the corners for a larger gap. Send pictures of your spawn, also test lc on agar and take a picture of that as well.


--------------------
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Shroomery

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: Blueberry Muffin]
    #29711172 -

Blueberry Muffin said:
No gadgets, liner not needed. If you don't have fae holes then flip the lid and for more fae you can rotate it a bit and-or put a little something between the lid at the corners for a larger gap. Send pictures of your spawn, also test lc on agar and take a picture of that as well.


Blueberry Muffin said:
No gadgets, liner not needed. If you don't have fae holes then flip the lid and for more fae you can rotate it a bit and-or put a little something between the lid at the corners for a larger gap. Send pictures of your spawn, also test lc on agar and take a picture of that as well.


The tub is already spawned so I can't get the latest photo of the GS bag. It wasn't a white block but it was almost there. There seemed to be some grains on the very top and very bottom that did not colonize. Those grains would just rattle around in the bag if moved. I broke up the GS and I really didn't see much else in the way of uncolonized grain. My noob eye thought it looked pretty good.
I inoculated the GS 9/25/26 and break'n shake on 10/12/26 and spawned the tub on 10/26/26.

I can't say where the kit came from (got my hand slapped for that already) but it's a reputable kit with plugs and filters in the lid. I know a liner isn't req'd but the kit had it so I used it. I'll continue to use it but if I expand my hobby I'll make a DIY mono and there's plenty of info on that topic already.

My LC on agar is the one on the left in the pic but that isn't the strain I've got in the mono. Those plates are a separate topic but here I'm wondering what if anything I can do to staunch the little invaders on the surface of my casing.


--------------------
THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE SHROOMERY

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: quest4answers]
    #29711235 -

OK. First off I challenge you to show me a thread where hacking a sub saves it.

Secondly, Ever since you opened that jar/bag sterility isn't a thing anymore. Sterile spoons are ridiculous. H2O2 isn't any better.

The proper thinking here isn't to remove contaminants from your culture but it should be to remove the culture from the contaminants.

You are going to spread that shit everywhere if you start dissecting it.

Never put ISO on your subs... sheesh.
:shamecube:

You need to face the fact that all of us has faced. Sometimes it's a total loss and it's better to start a new one with the added knowledge you have gained. Just keeping a contaminated tub is dangerous to everything else you are working on.


--------------------
Agar Plates and Removing Hidden Contaminants - A Visual Notebook
Recognizing Contamination in Grain Jars - A Visual Notebook
Contaminated Condiment Cup Cleanup v1.0

Green Cap Pheno Isolation

Edited by DV8DUG (10/28/26 07:12 PM)

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Re: Is it mold or myc? [Re: DV8DUG] * 1
    #29711263 -

Thanks DV8DUG. No one can tell me my idea is stupid uless I tell someone about it. This is what I needed to hear.

Thanks for the perspective of sepration; it makes sense.

The shame cube, hello darkness my old friend...

As for the ridiculous suggestion of H2O2 or iso on the sub, I'm well away of the volatility. I thought of it more like a cancer treatment; in that space they poison a part to save the whole.

In any case, thank you for the insight. I'll chalk this tub up to learning through loss. I'll make some adjustments and work toward a better outcome next time.


--------------------
THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE SHROOMERY

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Mushrooms, Mycology and Psychedelics > Mushroom Cultivation
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