Thereās also Woodland Formations in Canada, I havenāt tried them yet but they have good feedback on reddit
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I havenāt seen them in my searches. I will check them out. Thanks!
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check r/sporetraders on reddit. They canāt advertise actives on there anymore, but Iām sure there are some solid canadian mycologists who sell spores
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So I bit the bullet and went with myco. I got the mush box mini kit to get the feel for the fruiting stage while I work on getting the other stuff set up. The kit is extremely small but I figured it was good for testing the waters, it basically comes ready to fruit with either b+ or golden teacher.
I also ordered a 10cc LC syringe of tidal wave #2, 1lb of sterilized and hydrated grain, 3lbs of pasteurized substrate and 4lbs of casing mix.
I figured this would be my best option for now without buying the expensive equipment upfront. I have no idea what to expect but either way I should have plenty for my wife to microdose.
And I will have lots of questions along the way lol
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Was just browsing their site, and for what you spent here you could have bought just about all of that expensive equipment. lolol. But, this route takes all the guess work out of it, and that LC will go a long way inoculating beyond the 1lb of grain. Take pics when you get everything!
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@msm187 How much can be inoculated with the 10cc? I can get the expensive equipment for $200? I thought the pressure cookers and air boxes were way more then that.
I guess I should have done a little more research lol.
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Generally you only use about 1-2ml of LC per pound of grains. But some people pour it into the grain larger grain bags. Just donāt want any looking liquids on the bottom.
A still air box is just a plastic tote with holes cut in it for your arms. Many people just heat up a coffee can and use that to melt holes. Donāt attach gloves to the hole making a glove box, that moves air around a lot when putting arms in and out.
A pressure canner is going to be about 100-200 depending on size and brand, a flow hood is going to be an investment if your buying them pre made.
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Thatās not too bad then. I will see how this test run goes and decide if I will continue before buying the cookware. The air box seams pretty simple tho
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I was able to get my pressure canner for around $100, this one is $126(not sure about how much in Canada). A still air box is $10, itās just a decent sized clear rubbermaid or sterilite tub with two holes cut in it, you donāt want the air tight ones with gloves since youāll be flame sterilizing your needle. A flow hood is nice to have but only necessary if youāre really serious. As long as your process is solid youāll have very few contam issues that canāt be handled. Another $10-20 for a bag of oats at a feed store. $15 for the jars. $10 for various supplies(lighters, isopropyl, micropore tape, etc) and you have pretty much all you need to grow shrooms. If you want to get into agar add another $10-30 depending on how you want to do it.
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In a SAB (still air box), sterile work like agar is all about slow steady movements, and being very mindful where your hand and tools are. You donāt want to hover or pass your hands or any non sterile tools over your agar/grain/culture broth.
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Jesus, I guess I could have been all set up for what I spent lol
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What makes agar better then the spore or liquid culture. Is it just a cleaner starting point?
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Agar should be the starting point for everything except PF tek with brown rice flour (BRF) cakes. Liquid culture is a fast way to expand a culture, wether thatās mold, bacteria, or mushroom mycelium. So you need to start from a clean sample on agar yo start youāre LC. Putting spores directly to anything except agar or BRF cakes is just rolling the dice with contamination. Bacteria has a hard time growing and spreading through BRF cakes, and you donāt break up a cake so it doesnāt spread the contamination around. Mold means just throw it out.
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So you would use a still air box to put agar into the grain bag to inoculate to avoid contamination?
I was wondering about how agar was used but went with the lc because I thought it would be a more sterile route.
I have a lot to learn lol, there is more to this then I originally thought
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You can go as simple or as deep into this as you want. If you have a source for clean LC/spores and just want some fruits, use PF tek or pre made grain/rice bags and just get to it. But if you want consistency and have control of every step, or find different phenos of a variety, then youāll need some more equipment and learn to use agar.
Agar is used for just about every step really. Agar wonāt throw off your moisture content, so you can slice up a plate and put as many pieces into each jar/bag as you want. But for inoculating grain jars/bags, I prefer working with LC for the ease of injecting through a port. However LC are made with a sample taken from a clean agar plate. Many people open the jar and put in a chunk of agar, but I donāt like opening the sterile jar so I inject my sample through a silicone port. It literally just takes sucking up some of the LC broth or sterile water, poking the colony on the agar to ācontaminateā the needle with mycelium, and then injecting what ever stuck to the inside of the needle into the sterile LC broth. Though I try to get a biopsy/core sample with the needle, thereās often no visible agar or anything when I shoot it into the broth, it only takes a few living cells. A few days later Iāll see balls of fuzz that is mycelium growing. Then when the culture has grown some, you need to take a sample out and put it on agar to test it to make sure itās clean. Make sure itās only clean mycelium that grows before you use it. I test all the gourmet mushroom LC Iāve ordered too.
Starting from spores, you either put it on agar or into a BRF cake. On agar, you grow out some spores and any contamination that came with it. But you can transfer mycelium away from the contamination. Take many sample since each pairing of spores is a different set of genetics. Once you have clean growth on the plate go to some grains. With a BRF cake, you wait for it to colonize. Once itās fully colonized, and itās not mold, you ābirthā the cake and fruit it. Either way, once you get some nice fruits, you take a tissue sample of your favorites and put them on agar to ācloneā it. From there itās more agar to save the genetics and expand in LC for use. Granted you can risk putting spores to grains or LC, but you could just be growing a lot of contamination.
Iām no expert, but thatās what Iāve learned/done in the last few months 
. I ācheatedā too and got pre colonized agar plates from people on IG and used pre made grain bags and also tried the 90sec rice bags too. Also, check out āBroke Boi tekā if you want to prepare your own rice, popcorn, agar, and LC without a pressure canner.
As much as the experienced growers on the shroomery hate these, this is where I learned most of it, then lots of reading on shroomery.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSbJjSukZXqTvn3GLExvvIr17ayJ09t7o
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZkN1XUUEvapiQocq9Fs8XYsLmGrajZeX
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZkN1XUUEvaoQz3hHOVN7zwVZjPUUPH6M
From grains (or break up a clean BRF cake) I do this super simple shoebox, but I only use CVG, no nutrient in the bulk substrate. No fanning or misting at all. Mix and put into āfruiting conditionsā from the start or you can wait for the surface to colonize, kinda up to personal preference and how that set of genetics reacts.
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Wow! Thanks for that info man. I have a lot of studying to do
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I canāt expand on what @Seamonkey84 posted, but I can ELI5 it. lolol. Agar is the best way to get clean cultures, whether itās cloning from a fresh shroom or starting from spores. You do your first plate, then cut a small piece of clean mycelium from that and transfer to a new plate, rinse and repeat until you have a completely contam free plate. Then you can cut a couple pieces from that and put it to grain for a fairly easy grow going forward.
You can do all this in a SAB, hell, some people do it on their kitchen counter. The better your sterilizing technique and the cleaner the area, the less safety precautions you NEED, but going the extra steps is always good. Remember, people were growing these for years and they grow in nature without issue. Iāve watched a contaminated bag go from gross to viable as the mycelium beat out the contamination. The best thing to do starting out is what youāre already doing, go simple and not end up with paralysis by analysis. My first grow in this phase, and the current grow were UB tek. 20yrs ago in college we did a PF tek style grow under the kitchen sink with mold everywhere and still got actives to pop. The advanced methods we all talk about will help ensure a grow is successful, but donāt stress about it all starting out. Attempt, and success or fail, you learn and adapt.
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So has anyone used myco.ca before? I get sketched out ordering from new places lol
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