I originally posted this over in the contamination forum, but received little useful feedback. I posting it here in hopes that people with more experience than I, which wouldn't be hard, in liquid culture might share some thoughts.
On 4/17 I made four Karo Tek liquid cultures, one each of Pan Cyan, Orrisa India, Huautla, and African Transkei.
Within two days the Orrisa and the African showed visible snot blobs. The other two did nothing.
In a week, the Orrisa and African each had large shaggy white blobs in them, while the other two still did nothing.
At the end of two weeks, the Orrisa and the African seemed to have stopped growing, and I noticed a couple small black specks resting in/on the mycelial clouds.
The Huautla had developed a quantity of white(ish) sediment that settled on the bottom of the jar.
The Pan Cyan has only developed a very small amount of very fine sediment that is hard to see except with the light just right.
On 5/4 I made up four pint jars of substrate and inoculated two with the Pan Cyan, and two with the African.
The substrates are "experimental". One was 50% coir chunks, 25% store-bought steer manure, and 25% WBS that I had left over from a previous inoculation. The other was the same proportions, except substituting 50% shredded corrugated cardboard for the coir chunks. These were autoclaved at 15-18 psi for 40 minutes. The syringes were wrapped in foil and autoclaved with the jars. The needles were flamed and swabbed with alcohol between inoculation points.
On 5/7, I examined the pints and discovered that I injected a very healthy green mold culture into the African jar. Every speck of white growth I had the day before was now sporting an olive green cap. The Pan Cyan showed no signs of growth, and still doesn't.
The jars that show contamination are just the jars inoculated with the African liquid culture, and the contamination perfectly follows the innoculant path beneath each of the inoculation points. These jars were the coir chunk jars. I removed these from the incubator and autoclaved them along with the African liquid culture.
The other two jars, the ones with shredded cardboard, show now signs of contamination or growth. I have pretty much given up on them.
I have inoculated an additional quart jar of WBS with the Pan Cyan culture, and a WBS quart with the Huautla culture, and, to date, none of the Pan Cyan jars have shown any growth.
The Huautla WBS jar shows no mycelium growth. I'm not sure if the sediment is reproducing itself in there or not.
I am 99% sure that the Orrisa lc is green mold as well. I have made up a half pint jar and am in the process of verifying. Figures that the two cultures I thought were just taking off are the two most contaminated.
I am curious about the Huautla liquid culture. What is in the jar does not look like mycelium, but I have no idea what else it could be. I would think that bacteria or yeast would make the water cloudy. This just settled right to the bottom.
This hasn't been the best of weeks for me, as can be told from my other topic about my failed bulk run, but, on the up side, I'm ready to take another shot at the African culture, I have three quarts of Mestizo on WBS ready to spawn, and a quart of Mazatapec ready to case, in my incubator. A multi spore of the Pan Cyan syringe looks like it is beginning to sprout (Oh, please, give me just one fruit to print!) so maybe the syringe isn't bad.
Keeping my fingers crossed and learning, learning, learning.
Leimana
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