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frommoon
Stranger
Registered: 06/18/06
Posts: 45
Loc: Plutos Third
Last seen: 15 years, 8 months
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Opinions Wanted - A perspective on Grow Chamber Sterility
#5766713 - 06/19/06 02:55 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Wanted to know what your folks opinion was on the sterility of grow chambers. I am often surprised at the effort folks will go to when I read of various grow chamber set-ups. For example, making a HEPA box to pump clean air into a plastic tub or martha closet. Speaking of the martha - I read where folks add plastic to the bottom to seal the whole 'greenhouse' so as to not add contams from the floor up. Are we not constantly getting into our grow chambers and opening them up? I mean - we are in and out after flushes. Some of us do hand fanning or misting (as recommended in the original pf techs). It seems to me that a lot of extra work is put into trying to make the inside of a grow chamber as sterile as the inside of an incubating jar. Its totally different isn't it? I can see where the inside of Jars and Spawn bags must start as sterile as possible since we are trying to get the inoculation to prevail over competitors (especially when we have a whole jar or bag of grain to colonize). Even though I have been a cultivator for a while I am still confused with some of the reading. If you have a healthy casing started or solid rice cakes - sterility in the grow chamber can't be that important. Right or Wrong ? Looking for some good opinions on this. thanks, f
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RogerRabbit
Bans for Pleasure


Registered: 03/26/03
Posts: 42,214
Loc: Seattle
Last seen: 11 months, 3 days
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Re: Opinions Wanted - A perspective on Grow Chamber Sterility [Re: frommoon]
#5766838 - 06/19/06 04:56 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Correct. Contaminants in jars are caused by unsterile technique. Contaminants in grow chambers are generally caused by lack of air exchange. There is no need to keep a grow chamber sterile. Just be clean. A lot of new growers fail to make that distinction. Hope this helps. RR
-------------------- Download Let's Grow Mushrooms semper in excretia sumus solim profundum variat "I've never had a failed experiment. I've only discovered 10,000 methods which do not work." Thomas Edison
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2FiNiTe
ConsideratlyKilling Me


Registered: 06/12/06
Posts: 1,635
Loc: New England
Last seen: 7 years, 4 months
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Re: Opinions Wanted - A perspective on Grow Chamber Sterility [Re: RogerRabbit]
#5767491 - 06/19/06 10:12 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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This is also a touchy subject for me as well. I'm in the later stages of my first grow, a few of my cakes are for the most part finished and I'm getting ready to transfer to grow chambers. This subject peaked my attention because honestly I dont know. I sterilized my chambers just in case. But the more I read I find, once my cakes are in their chambers. Its not such a necessity to be sterile, but rather extremely clean as roger said. Constant temperature is also another subject that gets hazy for me. I read most places its not as much of an issue in the tetarium as it is in colonizing. I would help me a lot if the lines between yes and no werent so hazy on these subjects. Or maybe its just my mushroom intake that makes everything so hazy? Who knows!
-------------------- "Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living." General Omar N. Bradley
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creamcorn
mad scientist


Registered: 03/13/06
Posts: 2,962
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Re: Opinions Wanted - A perspective on Grow Chamber Sterility [Re: 2FiNiTe]
#5767544 - 06/19/06 10:34 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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its not hazy in this case, the answer is no, your FC doesn't have to be sterile. its basically impossible without a clean room to make it so anyway - no matter what extents you go through to "sterilize" your fc, you're only fooling yourself, the moment you open it to put something in or take something out, its not sterile, end of story. cleanliness is important but that's as far as it goes. some of the setups people come up with here are beyond overkill and their usefullness is questionable. (the people you see with hepa filtered FC's are the same ones that spend mucho $$ on useless grow lights and such as well ) colonized myc is not open game for contams, period. exposed, uncolonized substrate is, but that's something that should never be out in your FC if you've done things right. (the exception being certain casing mixes that contain small amounts of nutes, that sometimes can be hit by things like cobweb or trich, but its a fact of life in cultivation. proper fresh air exchange prevents the stagnant atmosphere where those contams thrive, as well as ph buffering your casing, so again proper technique prevents those problems for the most part, barring unfortunate bad luck that just sometimes happens) aside from that aspect, mycelium excretes metabolites as a secondary line of defense that actively kills invading contams.
go as simple as you possibly can. you might be surprised with the results. if you run into problems, then look for solutions, but don't try to fix what probably will never break in the first place.
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frommoon
Stranger
Registered: 06/18/06
Posts: 45
Loc: Plutos Third
Last seen: 15 years, 8 months
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Re: Opinions Wanted - A perspective on Grow Chamber Sterility [Re: creamcorn]
#5768148 - 06/19/06 02:05 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Thanks Creamcorn. Excellent response on the topic. f
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