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DT2K
asdsadwvwv
Registered: 10/21/05
Posts: 69
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How much innoculant?
#5490280 - 04/07/06 02:40 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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How much liquid innoculant should a Large Presealable Autoclavable Gusseted Bulk Spawn Bags w/ Self-Healing Injector Site such as the one in the link below get?
http://sporeworks.com/xcart/catalog/Larg...f--p-16250.html
I inoculated a couple of these bags with 130cc's and I believe that there is too much moisture now. Some bags developed extremely quickly and others didnt budge at all. The spawn bag tek says that you can technically use 140cc's, but I believe that to be quite wrong.
http://www.shroomery.org/index.php/par/28017
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EquilibriuM
dream stalker

Registered: 07/17/05
Posts: 2,323
Last seen: 16 years, 7 months
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Re: How much innoculant? [Re: DT2K]
#5490304 - 04/07/06 02:51 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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it depends on how wet your substrate is to begin with. 130 would be great if you didn't already have the substrate saturated.
-------------------- HELP!!!!!!!!!
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DT2K
asdsadwvwv
Registered: 10/21/05
Posts: 69
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Re: How much innoculant? [Re: EquilibriuM]
#5490360 - 04/07/06 03:05 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Well, they were soaked for 24 hours, then cooked for 40 min, then PC's for 3. Theyre pretty saturated in moisture as is, but doesnt 130cc's of liquid seem like alot to put into a bag?
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EquilibriuM
dream stalker

Registered: 07/17/05
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Re: How much innoculant? [Re: DT2K]
#5490391 - 04/07/06 03:21 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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hell yeah its a lot. and if you get the moisture content right it would colonize really fast. perhaps if you added some dry vermiculite to balance the moisture content out... ?
-------------------- HELP!!!!!!!!!
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skeletor
the dude
Registered: 09/06/05
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Loc: heaven on earth
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Re: How much innoculant? [Re: EquilibriuM]
#5490414 - 04/07/06 03:31 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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uhhhhhh 130cc!? try 10cc
-------------------- im sorry about your mother. She was a terrible attrative woman. Get back to nature; hunting burgers and gathering fries.
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EquilibriuM
dream stalker

Registered: 07/17/05
Posts: 2,323
Last seen: 16 years, 7 months
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Re: How much innoculant? [Re: skeletor]
#5490420 - 04/07/06 03:33 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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10cc will take forever with those bags. I currently use 60...
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DT2K
asdsadwvwv
Registered: 10/21/05
Posts: 69
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Re: How much innoculant? [Re: EquilibriuM]
#5490438 - 04/07/06 03:39 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Thats what I figured, somewhere between 60-100cc's depending on the water content. I was going to run a few tests next time around anyways, I just wanted somebody to confirm that the 60-100 range was the one I should be focusing on.
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Blue Helix
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Re: How much innoculant? [Re: DT2K]
#5491578 - 04/08/06 12:24 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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No, I wrote the tek and use 140 every time. In fact I just used that with some Pan Cyans with absolutely no problem. There are ways to mess it up, though. Were your bags pure grain? Were they at least 4 pounds of wet substrate? You need a full bag which should be over 4 pounds of substrate when wet. And pure grain has almost no moisture reserve capacity. That is if you add 20 ml of liquid inoculate, it'll just run down to he bottom of the bag and sit, fouling the bag. You need either vermiculite, compost, or manure in the mix to accommodate the liquid; otherwise, you must scale back the inoculate to much less. Notice in the Tek I specifically said to add vermiculite liberally. That's because it is important to do so.
Listen, 140 ml is very little liquid. If you think about it, it's less than a half cup. Are you saying that a single half cup of liquid ruined a gallon bag of substrate by making it too wet? That is highly doubtful unless the substrate was either pure grain or too wet to begin with. Next time, make your substrate just like you did this time but add exactly one cup of dry vermiculite to it right after you mix it. That will cover the absorption you need.
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DT2K
asdsadwvwv
Registered: 10/21/05
Posts: 69
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Re: How much innoculant? [Re: Blue Helix]
#5491728 - 04/08/06 01:13 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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My substrate consists of: (measurements taken before cooking)
3 cups basmati brown rice 3 cups quinoa 6 cups of vermiculite 1/2 cup millet 1/2 cup flax seed 5 1/2 cups of water
All except vermiculite are soaked for 24 hours. Then the rice and quinoa are cooked and allowed to steam for a few minutes. At that point theyre placed in the bags and PC'd for 3 hours.
The sides of the bags (of the ones that have developed) are quite wet. In one bag, which was completely colonized, there was about 20cc's of standing water accumulated in one spot causing a wetspot on the mycelium.
Overall, the tek is amazing, I just cannot account for the inconsistency of the results. Keep in mind that I made all bags almost identically. Only a few were contaminated (my fault though), 50% of remaining were colonized completely in under a week and other 50% nothing grew, or very slow colonization in a few very well defined areas. That is, there are white blobs of mycelium in some areas and it refuses to spread from those areas.
The only part that varied to some degree was how long I let the rice & quinoa steam for after cooking and before PC'ing. I might just try that one extra cup of vermiculite, as well as scaling down the innoculant by abit.
On a side note, just out of curiosity, what substrate do you use BH?
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Blue Helix
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Re: How much innoculant? [Re: DT2K]
#5492348 - 04/08/06 10:20 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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DT2K, thanks. I will explain what is happening. First, the substrate was a little wet but probably not too much. What stalled probably appeared really wet because some of it became infected with bacteria. One the bacteria takes over an area of the bag, it acts as a strong barrier to the mycelium and will stop it dead in its tracks. The two can live side by side just fine but not one on top of the another. That is why you see the well defined blobs of white and the uncolonized (bacterially infected) spots of uncolonized substrate right next to it.
Your mix is fine except it's too gooey; that is, some of the grain choices you made tend to release lots of nutritional content throughout the mix. When you do that, you make the mix highly unstable microbially because now bacteria have such an advantage. That?s why mycology texts tell you not to overcook grains until they burst because that makes the bag much more susceptible to bacterial outbreaks. ?Why is that if the inside of the bag is sterile?? you ask.
Well, first, it should be sterile right out of the pressure cooker, but once you inoculate it, it isn?t sterile anymore. When you inject a bag with a liquid culture, you will almost certainly introduce a lot of mycelium and a little bacteria. The bacteria might be very little, but given the right circumstances, they will take over the bag. Don?t believe me? Try injecting about a whole ml of liquid culture over the top of an agar surface sometime and wait. You?ll see what I mean. Now if bacteria are in there, why don?t they always win?
Think of yourself as a piece of mycelium. What is it that YOU can do that your age old competitors bacteria cannot? Well, it isn't growing fast; bacteria can run circles around mycelium any day. But there is something mycelium can do that bacteria cannot! What is it? Answer: mycelium can easily span across relative dry surfaces and even across enormous (from the perspective of bacteria) gaps of dry air! Bacteria, on the other hand, are limited to travel across damp surfaces (although they travel best by far in actual water) and cannot span air gaps in dead air (most cannot even in wind unless they?ve transformed into an endospore by harsh conditions not in a spawn bag). So you want your substrate mix to take advantage of the special abilities that mycelium has over bacteria because no matter how hard you try, your inoculation will probably somehow introduce a little bacteria just waiting for a chance to take over the bag.
So what to do? Get rid of the bacteria nutritional highways in your bag. First, make sure the substrate isn?t too wet. Standing water, in particular, acts as a super highway for bacteria. Aside from standing water, a large spawn bag should feel a little dry compared to say the substrate mix of a PF jar. Next, get the high nutritional content bound as much as possible to the INSIDE of the grains. Now manure is fine because it's relatively unappealing for bacteria at this point (unless its not aged as it should be). I am talking about the gunk that is inside the grains. You need to take out the flax seed ENTIRELY. Despite the fantastic nutritional profile of flax, the stuff is terrible in a substrate mix unless you use very, very little and even then I don't recommend it. Listen I?ve tried to use it many times because everyone said it was so great, but it isn?t good for a substrate that is going to be pressure cooked like this. When it gets hot in a really damp environment, it releases a lot of oil in some sort of strange gooey matrix (like egg whites) that seals off the substrate from breathing right and provides a bacteria highway between every part of the bag. GET IT OUT! As for the rest, the brown rice and quinoa should be okay but (a) I do not recommend to grind those grains up to flour before adding them and (b) barely cook them before putting them in the bag. You can cook them a third or half way, but they should still be hard when you mix them in. I know the old PF Tek has brown rice flour in it and works well, but a large spawn bag acts, in my experience, a little different than a cup of substrate; you don't want smashed up grains of any sort in a large spawn bag.
So you asked about my favorite mixes. My favorite mixes are simple, tried, and true and contain grains like those in wild bird seed that have tough outer shells keeping them well intact even after cooking. Here is one recipe that was pretty good:
3 pounds compost/manure 1 pounds WBS 1 pounds rye grass seed Tablespoon black mustard
The black mustard is like adding a shot of oil with some of it delayed release for later flushes. Now it?s a little like adding flax, so it must be added extremely sparingly. Too much will foul the mix and it's expensive and not required. The mix above worked well, but I don't think the rye grass seed was special at all. I used it because I had it around.
I like WBS, manure (or compost like Myco-Nitro), and vermiculite mixes best, but if you can't get manure, just replace it with more vermiculite. Never think of vermiculite as a waste of space in a bag. It doesn?t provide nutrition per se, but it does provide water and often that is more important than nutrition in a heavy flush of cubensis. The mix you listed will work if you take out the flax and undercook the brown rice and quinoa. However, you do not need to reduce the inoculants.
Edited by Blue Helix (04/08/06 10:58 AM)
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Blue Helix
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Registered: 02/02/03
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Re: How much innoculant? [Re: DT2K]
#5492396 - 04/08/06 10:40 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Oh, and one last thing. Next time pressure cook the bags for 4 hours. 3 hours is pushing it for a large spawn bag unless you had a single bag in the cooker which I doubt. It's not that it takes 3 hours to kill anything--the bad guys die in ten minutes once the heat hits them--but it could take 4 hours for sterilization temperatures to make it to the center of a couple large spawn bags. The 4 hours thing is doubly important if you have a bag that is rich in grain like yours.
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DT2K
asdsadwvwv
Registered: 10/21/05
Posts: 69
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Re: How much innoculant? [Re: Blue Helix]
#5492746 - 04/08/06 12:16 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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I'm definetly going to try your suggestions. I cook the rice and quinoa for 40 minutes (start counting as soon as they boil and let simmier for 40 minutes). So you're saying to do it for 20 and it'll be good?
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Blue Helix
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Re: How much innoculant? [Re: DT2K]
#5493561 - 04/08/06 04:09 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Yes, 20 or even 15 will be better. The reason is to help prevent the steam from destroying it so much.
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