I hope you dont get any contamination, I made a still air box to do my inoculations, and I still get the occasional contamination, the last time it was from coffee grounds I added, as they are supposed to help, but they didn’t lol…
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I hope I don’t either lol. The grain bag was pre hydrated and sterilized so that should be ok. But I’m expecting the diy liquid culture will most likely get contaminated. I just wanted to try to say I tried lol.
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So that kit is junk. It’s going to compost. On the plus side the tidal wave 2 looks good. It’s at 2 weeks since inoculation.
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That one looks good, did you get some contamination in the other one?
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No, not that I know of. it was a pre colonized substrate in a mushbox mini kit. It showed up almost 3 weeks ago with the tiniest bit of white and now there’s nothing. I think it might have died in shipping or something and I’ve been waiting for something to happen
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My spores lab order showed up today 
I picked up some totes for shoeboxes and a bigger one for a SAB
Also grabbed a small rack for slants.
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You are going all out now 
I have got a couple of petri dishes in the fridge I made with agar and instant mash potato. I lost about 70% of them to contamination. You should have enough spores there to last a few years lol and you can always make more from spore prints or clones, from bits cut out of the center of the stalks on the bigger shrooms.
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Lol I have a few more on the way. I like a little diversity but the main reason for all the different ones is I wanted to find a decent variety that is easy for me to grow successfully. I don’t see myself fruiting more then once a year but from what Ive been reading isolating mono cultures and separating single spores might be an interesting new project for me to test out.
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That’s looking nearly ready, once you mix up the mycelium in the bag it will populate the rest pretty quick 
Have you got your fruiting chamber ready for action yet ?
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@Shadey It did take over extremely quick. Im not doing anything fancy I was just going to run some shoeboxes.
I was originally wanting to run a big monotub but after reading, a couple small shoeboxes sound better for a newbie like me incase something goes bad it can be isolated to an individual box
I’m thinking I might stick the spawn in the fridge, I want to try a couple different kinds and the rest doesn’t show up until tomorrow. I was planning of having them fruit at the same time so it went with my work schedule a little better
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I have some in a jar since May now, they just go into suspended animation waiting for the right conditions to fruit, so sticking them in the fridge is ok, just needs to be dark as well to stop them fruiting in the bag. It’s the water that triggers them to fruit. If you take a spore print, put a mushroom cap under a glass, on some aluminum foil, and put a drop of water on the cap, it thinks it’s raining and will open its gills to release the spores.
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That’s cool. I was wondering about that. I wanted to try but wasn’t sure how to take a spore print. I thought I just put a cap on some foil.
I wanted to get a print and try to nail down a single spore
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lol good luck with that. there will probably be a couple of million to choose from. Cloning from a big mush is better with your slants or a petri dish. Just make everything as sterile as possible and cut out a bit of the center of a stalk and put in what ever you use to create more mycelium, you could go straight into a bulk spawn bag of grain or the slants/petri dish in case of any contamination, that way you have multiple back ups.
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I will be cloning also, I’ve been reading if you can get a single spore isolated from two different strains the mycelium from both will mate creating a species with traits from both.
I know it’s a long shot lol but a cool experiment
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Got a new toy today. I’m waiting on some LC media in the mail to test it out.
I need to rethink the whole agar work stuff. Every plate inoculated got contaminated. It’s not as easy as it looks lol
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Nice, that would be handy for a few other things as well.
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It was only $20 on Amazon so I’m not sure of the quality yet but can’t wait to try it out.
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My shoeboxes are on their way and I managed to get some on agar without getting contamination…. Not yet anyways lol
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Nice job man, the shrooms are pinning up well.
Your agar looks great, just try not to let that condensation on the inside drip down. It’s screwed a few of mine up.
If you stack them on top of each other after filling and let them cool down, for some reason only the top one will have condensation in it.
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