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very cool - what strain is that?

after my second dunking i had one cake show up with trich, a couple days later two more, on and on until all 14 cakes had to be tossed.  never made it to their third flush.

I had even clean and sterilized the FC while all the cakes were dunking.  alcohol, hot water all that. 

maybe someone here has an idea of what to do to stop the spread once it starts, but none of my ideas worked.

I don't have spores for the strain I'll be using for the blender-tek.  I'm going to try 3 different blender-clones, so hopefully at least one of them will survive without contams. 

I'll be inoculating half my grains with that strain, the other half with a for which I DO have spores.

Dub - I know you usually use grains:  How much spore solution do you use to noc a quart jar of grains?

All info appreciated.

Whoa!  Those are just the PINS?  Monmouth. 

I'm trying the blender-tek again, but would like to test the LC prior to destroying all of my prepped grains.  any suggestions?

Also, has anyone heard of using H2O2 on the mushroom stem prior to or during the process of cutting it and transferring to the LC?  My thought is that it would likely kill the outside tissue on the stem, but also kill all contams.  Then shredding the stem in the blender would "free" the living uncontaminated inside of the stem.

I think a lot of people walked out of Beowulf in the same fashion - that movie was terrible...

Anyone ever tried San Pedro Cacti?

should've let that freak grow and cloned it.  i would have loved to see what it looked like after a few more days of growing.  giant globby mushroom from hell.  very cool.

I had read about the "blender-tek" method of cloning:  cutting an uncontaminated portion of the mushroom stem, putting in blender with clean water, then inoculating the substrate with the juice.

Tried it with oyster mushrooms (picked same day) from the store.  Inoculated six jars pf-tek-style and two 6lb bags of pasteurized wood chips just for kicks.  I've been interested to learn if one can go direct from liquid culture to bulk substrate - if you use enough (a LOT) of LC.

Myc IS growing.  Unfortunately all of the 1/2 pints have trich right at the point of inoculation.  I'm guessing i was not clean enough when cutting the insides of the oyster stems.  jars are almost fully colonized at three weeks - but since they also have trich - they are all going into the compost. 

The trich had to come from the LC itself (unclean piece of stem to create LC) or from the re-used/sterilized syringe.  Thus far the wood chips are not contaminated, so I will let the myc run and see what happens.  If they grow I can assume the trich came from the syringe and not the LC.

So my point - blender-tek works!  You just have to do it cleaner than I did...

pics are hard to make out (crappy phone camera), but you can take a look here if interested:

http://s979.photobucket.com/albums/ae279/alt0182/lolie%20gaggin/?action=view&current=Photo_031810_001.jpg&newest=1
http://s979.photobucket.com/albums/ae279/alt0182/lolie%20gaggin/?action=view&current=Photo_031810_002.jpg&newest=1
http://s979.photobucket.com/albums/ae279/alt0182/lolie%20gaggin/?action=view&current=Photo_031810_003.jpg&newest=1
http://s979.photobucket.com/albums/ae279/alt0182/lolie%20gaggin/?action=view&current=Photo_031810_004.jpg&newest=1

i also really like the way the analog hydrometer is implanted into the side of the FC.  nice!

i'm much more of a novice myself, but on the recommendation of the forum I flipped a bunch of my jars that were not colonizing at the bottom.  about a week later much more of the brf/verm had colonized - shortly thereafter is started to see pins and even a couple of mushrooms inside the jars.  i quickly birthed/dunked everything and got them into the FC.

the hardest part is the WAITING to see pins and results.  everybody here told me "patience" - and they were right.

not a prize winner - but i really like the clarity of this one: 

http://s979.photobucket.com/albums/ae279/alt0182/lolie%20gaggin/?action=view&current=DSC02115.jpg

[Lunatik:  what strain is that?]

Balph is probably right - after seeing pics of other yields (MoorhS) - mine are very low volume.  Colonization and the rest of the steps have gone well, I consider it mostly a training exercise.  But the output has been pretty low.

I still have a lot to lean!

all advice much appreciated, and i agree with your suggestions.  the HI strain definitely seems to be more sensitive to the RE and FAE issues.  The EQs seem to be doing pretty well, maybe a bit heartier strain.

I'm fanning and misting more, and it seems to help.  If I decide to do another grow I'll drill holes and all that.

Thanks to all.

i think moorhS already won it with his "eye candy" post...

holy smoke!  makes my yields look so puny!  (yield envy)

I had problems with the Perlite getting trich - and it was damn near impossible to clean out to the big 31 gt container.  so I put the perlite into smaller containers sitting on the bottom of the fc and absorbing heat from below.  thus if there is contamination - i can remove the container easily.

In the winter we run about 10% RH where I live.  I was afraid that the oles would allow the FC to drop RH too quickly.  When I fan the RH will drop from 65% to 20% in a matter of minutes.

both suggestions make sense though...  On the next grow I'll see if doing it the traditional way helps.  I've been happy with the yields from the cakes thus far, but getting next to nothing from the casings.  live and learn.

Spore prints should last virtually forever - as long as they stay dry and uncontaminated. 

I put regular white rice (a Japanese strain that we eat all the time) into the "magic bullet" blender and ground it into flour.  Genetically rice is basically rice - brown or white.  Some will say that "white rice has had all the nutrients bleached out of it" - but actually it grows white, and is not bleached at all.

As long as you're not using Uncle Ben's (pre-cooked) or something out of a box with additives (like fake cheese or chicken flavor) you should be OK to just use what's in your cupboard.  you don't have to go nuts with expensive organic yadda yadda...

Some pics here of how my "WRF" cakes turned out so far:  http://s979.photobucket.com/albums/ae279/alt0182/lolie%20gaggin/

PS:  You can steam cakes and equipment for 90 minutes for sterilization - no, the dishwasher is not adequate.  Excellent instructions here:  http://www.mushroomvideos.com/BRF-Pf-Tek

no no no...  you have to chop if off and put it in your glove box.  then trim out some uncontaminated parts from the stem - assuming your junk is uncontaminated (might want to do some penicillin therapy before hand).  then put that part in the blender and use a syringe to inject into brf cakes.  in about three weeks your cakes should be fully colonized THEN put them in the FC.

let's not put the cart before the horse here.

You can eat them, but I think you're REQUIRED to take a pic of the look on your face when you have a mouthful of myc...   ...yes, we will all laugh at you.

Thanks for the info!  That's good news that the whole batch isn't going to turn to goo.  I've been fanning and misting a couple times a day.  It's super dry here, so even closed up the FC only gets up to about 65% or 75% RH.  Using piles of Perlite, but will see what else I can do to promote both FAE and RH.  Have pulled some ms out that were 5 and 6 gms each (wet).  So getting some decent size.

This is really the fun part.  Virtually every cake is pinning and growing now.  The cakes I cased are doing almost nothing - it's tray by tray.  Some good, some not.  but all of the cakes are going nuts. 

You can see more at http://s979.photobucket.com/albums/ae279/alt0182/lolie%20gaggin/

thanks!