ok... so heres a post that I did at the 'topia recently. I'm like the laziest person on this planet. BUT i use this laziness to find new quicker ways around things. lol heres an example. not sure if anyone here is doing this or not.. so if it's already been posted, i apologize in advance (just think of it as reassurance that it works for more than just you ) heres the post...
First off, this isn't something you want to try with the last few drops of spore solution you have, but you may want to give it a whirl if you have a few extra. i hope you don't have to but unfortunately, contam's are inevitable in our hobby.
So i just got hit by the 'summertime blues' as i call em... some green got into a syringe and a few pf jars went south.
I've gotten pretty good at spotting a contam, whether it be trich or bact. (two most common in my house) within five days after innoc. I keep a very close watch on em two days after innoc'd so that if they do go bad, i can start more right away and not grow mold so I can't open the jars to throw them out instead of pc'ing again. basically, if i see the slightest tinge of green they are opened and thrown out.
So this happened... i saw very small bits of green at all innoc. points on the jars leaving me to believe that the syringe was the culprit. sure enough, all jars were the same.
so i started cleaning out the jars... about the second jar in i was thinking... this sucks! these jars are only four days old and i'm throwing them out... all that work down the drain. then i thought... what if i just pc'd them again and re-innoc'd? about 99.9 % of the mold wasn't to spore yet... the mold myc. was also very thin.. you could barely see it.. the jars were still heavy so little loss of moisture occured the first pc'ing...
So i did re-pc. and re-innoc'd. the mold myc. got even thinner after the second pc'ing... barely visible but now i can't tell if it's the new myc. or mold... Yet. once the myc. (or mold) starts growing out completely i'll be able to tell how it went. the 'new' jars are only four days old now so the jury is still out but i thought it would be something others may want to give a try. i'm sure it could work fine with grains too (if it works at all). Just have to catch it early to get it in the pc again before theres a shitload of mold spores in there. again, this is just an experiment.. I'm trying to save hours and hours of my time. technically, most everything should be killed in the pc'ing so it's not like im just being reckless. the more visible mold, the more time on the second pc'ing. I'll keep ya posted!
Then someone asked what kind of lids i was using. and i replied....
well... i was using just plain tyvek lids with tape for the syringe making but the summer is here and with it, trich. so now i've stock-piled self healing lids which have been tested successfully so now i have a new confidence that the summers will no longer be such a friggin frustrating period for growing. this was the last of my old lid batches. so i wasn't too surprised that it happened. but with this failure i have possibly stumbled across a practice that will save me lots of time on future failures... so it's all good.
Six days into the Re-innoc. I came back after being away for two days...
SUCCESS!!! sure enough, the jars are colonizing myc. at their innoc points... right over the top of the old mold rhizos. there is NO sign of anything recovering after the second pc'ing. the jars are still heavy (I should mention that i use 1/3 cup water instead of the trad. 1/4 c.) and will have no problem finishing out ok. Although i may have to dunk before 1st flush but that isn't a big deal.. I'll post pics of the tub that the jars are going into when they flush out... there are 24 cakes that i did this way. so far ALL are recovering just fine. WHEW! all that work wasn't wasted. !!!!! I'm pretty freakin excited as you can tell. ever lose 96 pf jars?? lol but at the same time i kinda feel like a dumbass throwing out all those jars in the last few years. why does it have to take so damn long for something sooooo simple to click into place?? lol I'm guessin that this will work for grain jars also.. I don't see why not.
then someone said that it's good that i could redo the jars BUT there may still be some spores that survive the pc...
thats why it's good to conclude the jars are contam'd as soon as possible so they don't go to spore. you can also fight this by making sure you re-innoc. at the same exact spot in the jar that was contam'd. the myc. will eat over it quickly.
then someone said that I was lazy, LOL and that the dryness of the re-pc'ing would have to be the next hurdle. in which i said...
man... i dunno what it is.. but 'arrowhead mills' brand brf can take a large amount of water to it before it starts getting gooey... red mills goes gooey... those are the only two brands i've tried. but i use 1/3 c. water so they are nice and heavy when i birth them. this definately helped in that respect. about the laziness... hey, if you don't need it, why do it?
so thats all i got so far. the jars are only 7 days in now and still doing just fine (I don't expect them to go south at all). I'll indeed post pics of their fruiting. 
fahtster
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