does L.E.D. color or aeration stimulate mycellium spawning?

[SnapzWagner]

so, i just inoculated my BRF jars last week, and i know the key to colonization, and ultimately harvesting is patience. But i tinkered a bit along the way until i decided to try a different method than i usually do. I've had luck in the past, but my last crop took ridiculously long for colonization even by shroom standards. i believe i identified what i did wrong last time. Kept the jars in the dark 99% of the time, had them set up inside a tupperware bin without proper air flow, and may have made the environment a bit too warm for innoculation.

i've heard so many contradictory things from other growers, some say keeping the jars above 80 degrees will cause contamination, others swear it will stimulate spore growth and speed the process. some people say light conditions arent a factor until theyre ready to start fruiting, others say a 12/12 light/dark cycle is the only way to go. Needless to say, if there are any veteran growers here i could really use some advice. Since i decided to try a different setup this time than i have in the past.

i currently have them in a large cupboard that isnt airtight by any means, theres a few holes near the back, and the doors can be left open a crack if need be. I took a visit to the local pet store and invested in a deluxe LED light/air stone for aquariums. I also placed a heating pad in the lower drawer underneath the growing cabinet, just enough so that the heat can rise enough to up the temperature by 5 or 6 degrees if need be.

The LED light/airstone is a little bigger circumference than a baseball, but flatter of course. And the light itself is a mixture of red, blue, yellow and white. with the flattened air stone in the middle, a little bigger around than a silver dollar.

can anyone tell me if the color of LED lighting will affect the mycellium? and could it be beneficial to actually hook up the aeration tubing to pump small amounts of fresh oxygen into my colonization cabinet? If anyone has any experience with this stuff i'd really appreciate the help

 

[Solipsis]

You do not need air flow but gas exchange, just the passive exchange of CO2 which can be done with a filter. If you have absolutely none of that either, I do imagine you get stalling.

Not sure what your room temperature is, but you do not really need high temperatures. I think normal room temperature should be fine but adding a few degrees might make a small difference but is not truly necessary. Warming to avoid actual cold would be necessary on the other hand.
Very high temperatures will not only get counterproductive but you would also be giving different kinds of contaminants a change that love the warmth. Ultimately there is also thermal death.

These are not plants, you don't need light let alone a light/dark cycle. At some stage having at least *some* light present may help with the pinning, but that might be rather for a signal that the mycelium is not way underground, not for photosynthesis. So just a very standard light is good, nothing complicated like when you get into plant growlights which trust me can get confusing and complex. And forget about light if you're not pinning / fruiting anyway. Mycelium that is still colonizing lives underground, why would you need light?

How cold is it in that cupboard under normal circumstances?

Again, don't worry about the light, it shouldn't even be necessary but if you're that worried a really regular lightbulb of some kind of a desk lamp etc should all be fine when fruiting. Doesn't have to be bright either. Just not pitch black darkness.

I wouldn't worry about pumping air in either if there are just cracks etc - the holes in the back sound sufficient.

Main thing is: stop treating them like plants.

To know why you have such slow colonization we'd need to know things like if the tupperware is airtight (no use in getting concerned about aeration of the cabinet if there is zero gas exchange in your colonizing jars) and what kind of temperatures we're dealing with, with heating and without heating.

Oops sorry I see that the warmth and airtight containers were last time... Nevertheless, that just means get jars with proper filter discs or filterbags so that you have gas exchange, pumping air is something else entirely. Other than that, who knows what other problems arose last time, but the lack of gas exchange seems like a big enough of a problem.

Do it the regular way now, temp at normal room temps or if heated not past the ideal colonization temp, and give them gas exchange. No aquarium or terrarium accessories imo.

 

[SnapzWagner]

Thanks for the help, last time i did it it was a kind of shoddy attempt. Not for lack of trying, but trying to keep the whole thing covert - thus the sealed tupperware, the dark stuffy area, and temperature fluctuation.

I have a little thermometer/humidity guage in with the jars. and it seems to average out at 72 - 75 degrees. with humidity under 50% always. I still have the metal jar lids with the 4 holes punched in them, with a layer of dry verm on top of the cake of course. Would it benefit me to remove the metal jar lids and replace them with tyvek filters?

as you said, gas exchange is crucial. Assuming the right idea is to whisk that used CO2 out of the grow area, and ideally replace it with fresh air. I guess technically, my oxygen pump would actually be a better idea in reverse. i.e. taking the stale air in the grow cabinet and vacuuming it out, displacing it with fresh air. Rather than just pumping air into the grow cabinet. Anyway, i dont want to modify things to the point where it fails, i'd like to let it do its thing and if i can help it grow faster, and stronger even a little bit, without jeopardizing the whole operation, then i'm open to that.

One thing i am worried about is i inoculated each cake with 5cc of spore fluid. (1 needle for every 2 cakes) i thought it would increase the chance for more even colonization, but now i've read that too much spore can actually be really bad. is that true?

You do not need air flow but gas exchange, just the passive exchange of CO2 which can be done with a filter. If you have absolutely none of that either, I do imagine you get stalling.

Not sure what your room temperature is, but you do not really need high temperatures. I think normal room temperature should be fine but adding a few degrees might make a small difference but is not truly necessary. Warming to avoid actual cold would be necessary on the other hand.
Very high temperatures will not only get counterproductive but you would also be giving different kinds of contaminants a change that love the warmth. Ultimately there is also thermal death.

These are not plants, you don't need light let alone a light/dark cycle. At some stage having at least *some* light present may help with the pinning, but that might be rather for a signal that the mycelium is not way underground, not for photosynthesis. So just a very standard light is good, nothing complicated like when you get into plant growlights which trust me can get confusing and complex. And forget about light if you're not pinning / fruiting anyway. Mycelium that is still colonizing lives underground, why would you need light?

How cold is it in that cupboard under normal circumstances?

Again, don't worry about the light, it shouldn't even be necessary but if you're that worried a really regular lightbulb of some kind of a desk lamp etc should all be fine when fruiting. Doesn't have to be bright either. Just not pitch black darkness.

I wouldn't worry about pumping air in either if there are just cracks etc - the holes in the back sound sufficient.

Main thing is: stop treating them like plants.

To know why you have such slow colonization we'd need to know things like if the tupperware is airtight (no use in getting concerned about aeration of the cabinet if there is zero gas exchange in your colonizing jars) and what kind of temperatures we're dealing with, with heating and without heating.

Oops sorry I see that the warmth and airtight containers were last time... Nevertheless, that just means get jars with proper filter discs or filterbags so that you have gas exchange, pumping air is something else entirely. Other than that, who knows what other problems arose last time, but the lack of gas exchange seems like a big enough of a problem.

Do it the regular way now, temp at normal room temps or if heated not past the ideal colonization temp, and give them gas exchange. No aquarium or terrarium accessories imo.

 

[Solipsis]

What is between the hole-punched metal lids and the dry verm?

You should use something like putty to make self-healing injection ports out of those lidholes if you don't have tyvek or SFD's. You don't replace the lids with filter material, those discs are put under the lid so that they are secured.

There should be little difference in pumping in air or pumping out air, small differences would be that if there is actually not a lot of passive air flow (like holes or creaks) you have a small underpressure or underpressure which are what would be pushing out air or sucking in air. Also, depending on whether you pump air in or out you can control if that air gets filtered or pass by something contaminating. It's good to have overpressure pushing air out of the cabinet if the air you pump in is sort of clean. If you are sucking in air through all the creaks and crannies you do not want those to be bacterium- and fungal infested. I don't think there should be so much respiration of your myc that the passive flow can't just account for it in the first place which is why I wouldn't think the pump is relevant.
The dry verm is a buffer for contaminants, but I wouldn't rely on it to stave off just random shit in the air (hence the filters, and the possible imporantance of how contaminated your air is). Also make sure you do all this in an immaculate room rather than just some neglected student's chamber.

If you have the pump anyway and don't think that the humming compromises the very stealth you are trying to achieve here, it probably couldn't hurt as long as you don't make the air more contaminated rather than less.

The volume of spore suspension says nothing, it completely depends on where it came from and how diluted it is compared to some kind of sporeprint. Also you'd need to provide some kind of reference / context as to why too many spores would be bad.

You normally want enough spores to both cover the grounds and have enough vitally germinating haploids colonizing, combining to mate and colonize as diploid mycelium iirc. maybe too many spores just make a giant shit show of competition? Again, it is hard to say in the first place if you don't know how many spores per ml are there to start with, but it's possible that you cannot compensate for some unrelated concern by just overkilling it with the spore solution. Please provide some context and besides stick to the guidelines - I haven't heard you mention modifications to the method that have a chance of being useful rather than detrimental.

Good luck

 

[SnapzWagner]

update: using the LED light for 8 hours a day, increasing the heat to 78 degrees kickstarted the spores, and i decided to try the air pump for about 5 minutes every few hours. The LED lights started the mycellium growing on the side of the jar facing the lights, but after the first day of using the air pump colonization increased to about 25%. i guess the modifications worked pretty well. The jars are only topped with dry verm, plus the 4 hole punched lid capping the jar. and the heating pad in the drawer underneath the grow cabinet allows me to regulate the heat from 70 to 78 degrees depending on what setting i use. ive never seen it put the temp over 80, and the warm rising air keeps humidity down to about the 45 to 50% range. that makes it 4 days since the innoculation, and the spores are already thriving

 

[Solipsis]

It's a bad plan to leave it exposed to the atmosphere even if you put on dry verm, it's asking for contamination.

If you give it light then sure it may grow in that direction thinking it is up and out of the ground - the pinning and fruiting would commence if the conditions are right but you don't want that to happen until you birth and fruit the cakes.

I still don't know what kind of room temperature you have in your house without the heating and yes extra warmth can help a bit but shouldn't be strictly necessary unless you have some really lazy old spores.

The humidity should be much much higher than what you have, inside the jar closed off except a filter for gas exchange - so the outside humidity shouldn't matter as you would be keeping the water inside. With what you have now you should expect to be drying out your cakes to the dry air.

I'm glad you're having success but it's not the best idea to learn how to grow the fungus based on experience that flies in the face of regular practice and method, possibly from incorrect interpretation / assumption about what is helping or not.

The air pump I can see helping if otherwise the air gets really stale and impairs proper gas levels. So by all means use it, and the warmth certainly can't hurt... but correct the other mentioned issues with your technique is my advice.

 

[SnapzWagner]

it isnt really "exposed" per se, it is in a cabinet, and the jars are inside a plastic bin that was disinfected with bleach before i put the jars in there. however, i do leave the lid of the bin slightly askew to let some air get in there. I know that causes some exposure, but in the past i have left the jars to spawn in a sealed completely sterilized container, and it took almost 2 months for the cakes to fully colonize. I assumed it was due to lack of air, and co2 building up inside the container, but i digress

the setup i have is the jars inside a container, which is inside a sanitized cabinet. your right, maybe leaving the container lid open a bit could allow for contaminates to get in, but i want proper gas exchange, and honestly the cakes looked a bit TOO moist when i initially inoculated them so i want them to dry a bit, but not too much. As far as dust/dander/unwanted spores, etc. if its a matter of them drifting downward and settling on top of the cake, they would have to be sucked into the cabinet, float down into the 1 inch gap i left open on the frontside of the bin, do a 90 degree turn, fall into one of the 1/16 inch wide holes i punched on the jar lid, settle onto the dry vermiculite and infect the moist cake underneath. I'm not saying that sarcastically, or that that ISNT possible, but in the past ive had problems with cakes that i had sealed off, in a completely sterilized environment. As in i went "overkill" with sterilization, and sealing them off completely. When those cakes finally did colonize, they never really colonized completely, yet they were still pinning.

I'm sure theres a happy medium, and i'm sure you have much more experience in fungus than i do. It's getting close to where i do want my jars to retain moisture, and i suppose i will seal the lid on top of the container today, and only crack it open for a minute a day as needed to let co2 out and air in. In the past, for the most part, ive had much more issues with the fruiting stage then the colonization stage. Not to say im not open to suggestions, and i appreciate your advice. I'd really rather this be a healthy harvest for me rather than a learning experience

 

[Solipsis]

Having had problems in the past shouldn't make you conclude that it doesn't matter what you do, that it will always be some random chance it won't go well.

Again, there is a solution to contamination and dehydration much less convoluted than what you describe and it's filters like in filter bags or SFDs.

I don't know what you meant by "sealing off completely", that doesn't sound like accounting for gas exchange.

To make the best out of your current grow, not sure but I guess keep the humidity higher by placing preferably sterilized and/or demineralized water in a dish in the cabinet so that it evaporates there. There is hardly a way of telling whether that encourages contaminants as well, but you can't afford to let it all dry out immensely either. Usually high humidity is not enough for contaminants to really get going, they need water. So there must not be condensation.
It's a tradeoff. You want to leave it a little open, but not. With every concession to let a bit of air in, it carries contaminants. You might think you work in a clean manner, but they are invisible and countless hang around in the air.
Be on the lookout for the mycelium coming off the sides of the containers, as it dries out it would shrink.

In any case, if you can get both higher humidity but limited active airflow that may be good. Passive airflow should be less of an issue since in still air things don't go upward so much.

For now you may be okay, but the mycelium can overgrow the dry verm with a fluffy perimeter... So this overgrowth would be susceptible to contaminants which would all have landed on your dry verm over time. The overgrowth has very low density but as it still contains water and could be prey for the contaminants, it is their way in. You'd hope that by then your mycelium can handle a bit of a fight but it's just not good to wear it out before it's even birthed.

The issues with the fruiting would have to be covered separately I guess. Sorry I have less advice on how to maximize your current setup rather than to point out what to correct next time, it's harder to have a makeshift solution for everything and makeshift solutions are no substitute for proper methods. The no direct exposure thing is just kind of a biggy, sorry.

I'm sure you can combine technically sound methods with that stealth.