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jellyfish

Registered: 10/02/05
Posts: 7,457
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Second attempt at growing (any tips?)
#5878089 - 07/19/06 02:42 PM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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Last year I tried using the pf tek to grow some shrooms. It was either my spores were contaminated or the fact that I boiled the jars instead of pcing them that ruined it. This year I've met someone who says they used to grow and they are helping me quite a bit. He insists that we don't need a pressure cooker and that all we need is agar agar and malt extract. Today we prepared the agar by suspending them in a pot to steam sterilize them and now we are waiting for them to cool. Does this sound like it will work? How would I go about putting spores from my spore print in the petri dish? He says we should just open it as little as possible close to a fan to prevent airborne contaminants and use a sterile tool to poke the spores into the dish. I am worried that we will fail and I will lose our only spores becuase he doesn't seem to worry to much about contamination (which worries me).
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jcee
Stranger


Registered: 06/06/06
Posts: 234
Loc: dallas tx
Last seen: 13 years, 11 months
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Re: Second attempt at growing (any tips?) [Re: jellyfish]
#5878121 - 07/19/06 02:50 PM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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pc them. spores arent the prob
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jcee
Stranger


Registered: 06/06/06
Posts: 234
Loc: dallas tx
Last seen: 13 years, 11 months
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Re: Second attempt at growing (any tips?) [Re: jcee]
#5878125 - 07/19/06 02:51 PM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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research infracture method
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creamcorn
mad scientist


Registered: 03/13/06
Posts: 2,962
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Re: Second attempt at growing (any tips?) [Re: jcee]
#5878197 - 07/19/06 03:23 PM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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well no offense to your friend, but he's clueless.
1) malt/agar really should be pressure cooked. you can get away with steam sterilization, but with very poor success rates.
2) working close to a fan is the stupidest thing you can do. smart sterile practice is elimination of air currents, drafts, etc.
you should worry about failure, because combining 1 & 2, its almost garunteed.
lets just say for a moment you DO get clean agar plates from those ass backwards methods... then what? you can't really grow from agar/malt alone. going from agar to spawn means taking a wedge from the plate, and innoculating a grain jar. grain absolutely must be pressure cooked. (the other option, which again is shoddy, is fractional sterilization, i think thats what jcee meant.)
if you're not using a pressure cooker, do a pf-tek. i have produced dozens of cakes with a 95% success rate steam sterilizing alone. chances are you messed something else along the way. depending on your spore source, it is possible they were the spores... but it was more likely you didn't steam sterilize long enough (i go for 1hr 15mins, anything less and up to an hour i've found to be risky), or you introduced the contaminates during inoculation.
read up a little more, you have the combined wisdom of hundreds of experienced growers at your fingertips right here... see what they have to say before listening to your friend.
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fastfred
Old Hand



Registered: 05/17/04
Posts: 6,899
Loc: Dark side of the moon
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Re: Second attempt at growing (any tips?) [Re: creamcorn]
#5878708 - 07/19/06 06:36 PM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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LOL, trying to drop spores onto a petri in front of a fan is a sure way to contam. You'd also be very lucky if any spores landed in the dish rather than blowing away.
Read up. Creamcorn has a good LC tek you might want to check out. You could probably scrape some spores into an LC and have it work decently.
-FF
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