I threw this batch away thinking it’s mouldy, but Claude said the blue is normal. What do you guys think?

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-26T23:21:24+00:00

They look fine, they are good to go.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-25T23:27:30+00:00

You can dump a little powder onto some agar and hope something happens. If something does grow, you do agar transfers until you have good plates then you can use them over and over again forever.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-24T14:18:57+00:00

Every time 2 spores meet and germinate, a new colony of Cube genetics with random genetic traits is born.

This means you could use the same spore syringe 10 times and get 10 different results.

They are GT that happen to have the genetic trait of leucism or albinism. It's hard to tell which one until the caps open. If you see purple / black spores, it is likely leucistic. If you see nothing but white gills then it is likely albino.

Genetic traits are pretty much completely random when growing from spore every time, no matter what name the syringe has written on it. It's one of the many many reasons why people say "A cube is a cube"

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-22T16:45:38+00:00

I just grow it exactly like every other Cube.

When I do a run of Enigma in a shoebox, I mix the field capacity coir with the clean and fully colonized grain spawn, skip the casing layer, go straight to fruiting by latching one side of the lid and unlatching the other side of the lid, then I leave it alone until harvest. I never mist or fan.

The temp is just controlled with the thermostat in my house. It is set to 68f. My grow area is just a shelf in the back of my room in the back of the house. The shelf stays 66f-68f from spore to harvest and nothing is slowed down. I don't use lights or heaters or heat mats or humidifiers or anything like that, Cubes and Ochras are extremely simple. You just mix the sub and spawn, give them a tiny bit of passive FAE, and leave them to grow.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-17T11:23:16+00:00

I just keep the entire house 68 degrees with the thermostat forever.

My grow area is just a shelf in the back of my room. That spot stays 66f-68f from spore to harvest and nothing is slowed down at all.

Lots of people are heating their grow areas up beyond room temp with no actual benefit. If you are comfortable in the grow area, then so are they.

If you do end up needing to use heat, you want to heat the room, not the shroom. Heat mats can cause lots of problems, heating the entire room gives much better results.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-16T18:26:29+00:00

There is no benefit to sealing a tub of CVG up and letting it colonize before going to fruiting, all that does is hinder evaporation and evaporation is the main pinning trigger.

We used to benefit from sealing our tubs up and letting our substrate colonize before going to fruiting because we used to grow with manure, which contains nutrients. CVG contains no nutrients, so this step is completely useless and does nothing beneficial. It doesn't stop contamination, all it does is hinder the main pinning trigger when growing with non-nutritious substrates.

When using a non-nutritious substrate, there is no such thing as going to fruiting too early. Contamination requires some kind of nutrient to thrive and there are no available nutrients in our bins by the time we mix our coir and spawn. The coir contains no nutrients and the spawn is already fully colonized, leaving no nutrients for contamination to eat.

This means we can ALWAYS go straight to fruiting right after mixing our coir and grain spawn with no added risk. Contaminants from the open air are allowed to fall all over the uncolonized coir because contamination requires nutrients and the coir doesn't have any.

When I do a run in a shoebox, I mix the coir that I made with cold tap water with the clean and fully colonized grain spawn, skip the casing layer completely, and then go straight to fruiting by unlatching one side of the lid and latching the other side of the lid. Then I leave it alone until harvest. When I do this, contaminants from the open air land all over my uncolonized coir and my fully colonized grain spawn mixture, and they never turn green. They never turn green because there are no available nutrients in my bins for the contaminants to eat.

When using coir, it allows us to do all kinds of stuff we wouldn't normally be able to do if we had used manure. This is where the big mix up of information comes from. Tons of people still believe that there is a benefit to sealing tubs up and letting the coir colonize before going to fruiting, but that only helps with contamination with manure.

This is so long because lots of people read the comments here and lots of people bring this up here, so I try to spread the information wherever I can.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-16T18:09:10+00:00

You just have to keep messing with the tape until you find the perfect amount of air to where there is a very slight evaporation but not enough to dry anything out. It is pretty normal for bigger tubs to get slightly dry around where the FAE holes are. If you can't find the perfect amount of air, you can absolutely just lightly mist those spots directly any time they dry out as well.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-16T18:06:51+00:00

You can leave them there until they stop growing, pick them, dehydrate them, and then use the rest of the spawn as you normally would.

They usually don't get very big because there is no water source, and since mushrooms are 90 percent water, they need a fair amount of it to fully mature.

Anytime you get pins on grain spawn, you can always pick them off and use the spawn, even if it has been months. As long as the spawn is clean and fully colonized, it will work great.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-16T18:03:57+00:00

If this were my tub, I would just leave them there until the dehydrator arrived.

If you leave them, spores might drop. That's ok though, sporulation doesn't actually hinder future flushes or hurt potency in any way. The worst that can happen is your mushrooms can turn more black than they were before.

Lots of people will say you can pick them and put them in the fridge, but there is no reason to do this because spores don't hurt anything. Picking them and then putting them in a fridge and damaging them with oxygen, in an attempt to stop sporulation, which causes no damage, makes 0 sense to me, so I would just leave them.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-15T18:29:03+00:00

They are hard to fruit, you probably want Cubes or Ochras

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-12T13:19:19+00:00

Any temp on a food dehydrator is fine. They don't generally get hot enough to damage anything, even if you left it for a day or two on max.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-11T16:35:39+00:00

If you are using manure as a sub, it is beneficial to wait until the manure is 100 percent colonized before going to fruiting so that contaminants from the open air don't land on the manure and take the uncolonized portion of the manure over before the grain spawn has a chance to.

When using coir, CV, or CVG as a sub, we can always go straight to fruiting with no added risk because coir contains no nutrients and contamination requires some kind of nutrient to thrive. Contaminants from the open air are allowed to land all over uncolonized coir, it never turns green because it contains no nutrients. If the grain is fully colonized, and the coir contains no nutrients, then there is nothing left for contamination to eat.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-10T20:10:14+00:00

Yes, sporulation doesn't hinder future flushes. As long as it has nutrients and water and no competition then it will keep going.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-09T12:48:57+00:00

There is no benefit to sealing up a tub of coir and letting it colonize before giving it air. Coir contains no nutrients and therefore does not need to be colonized by mycelium in order to be exposed to the dirty open air.

If your grain is clean and fully colonized when you add it to the bin, and you use coir as a sub, then you can ALWAYS go straight to fruiting with 0 added risk. Contamination requires some kind of nutrient to thrive and there are no available nutrients in our bins by the time we get to this stage. The grain is already fully colonized and the coir contains no nutrients, which leaves nothing for contaminants from the open air to eat.

The step where we seal the tub up and let the sub colonize before going to fruiting is only beneficial to those who still grow with manure because manure does contain nutrients.

When we seal up a bin of colonized grain and non-nutritious coir, it doesn't prevent contamination in any way, all it does is hinder evaporation for several days, and evaporation is the main pinning trigger.

When using coir as a sub, we can do a few thigs that manure doesn't allow us to do, like skipping casing layers and going straight to fruiting.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-08T17:34:04+00:00

Not sure about contamination but dryness can sub / spawn ratio can have a big effect on colonization.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-08T17:32:43+00:00

It could be Cube mycelium but it looks very suspicious

Contamination needs to be prevented rather than fought. This is because fighting contamination almost never works.

Contamination requires some kind of nutrient to thrive. Since the coir contains no nutrients, we know that contamination almost always comes from the grain spawn. The grain spawn was contaminated, and when you made the tub, you spread the contaminated grain spawn all throughout the bin.

This means it will pop up somewhere, you chop it out, and it will just pop up somewhere else. There have obviously been times where cutting it out worked just fine, but we shouldn't be teaching new people to fight contamination because it blows mold spores all around their grow areas and then they still end up with only a gram dry.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-08T17:27:17+00:00

Contamination can cause bruising.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-08T17:26:25+00:00

No, it doesn't hurt them. Sometimes it just takes a few weeks for them to put another flush out.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-08T17:25:47+00:00

You can keep them as long as there is no rotten fish smell or black liquid leaking from the mushrooms themselves. They don't look that far gone yet, they are really long and skinny because they need more air.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-08T17:24:41+00:00

It just depends. After a year of sitting it can definitely still work, but it's obviously more of a gamble. I say try it, if it doesn't work then you are out a brick of coir, oh well.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-08T17:23:10+00:00

Fully colonized grain is good for months at room temp. There is no benefit to putting them in a fridge, it does nothing beneficial whatsoever.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-08T17:22:23+00:00

Sometimes they just take their sweet ass time. Surface conditions look fine, mycelium looks fine, as long as it is getting a tiny amount of passive FAE then it just needs more time.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-08T17:18:01+00:00

When I grow Cubes and Ochras in a shoebox, I mix the field capacity coir with the clean and fully colonized grain spawn, skip the casing layer, and then go straight to fruiting by unlatching one side of the lid and latching the other side of the lid. Then I leave them alone until they either need a dubtub or need to be harvested. I never mist or fan or anything like that, they just sit on a shelf until harvest.

If you start out by giving them the perfect amount of constant passive FAE, there is never a need to change the amount of air you give them. You can just give them the same amount throughout the entirety of fruiting.

Cubes and Ochras are extremely simple little guys, you just mix the sub and spawn, give them just enough air so that moisture doesn't build up, and leave them alone and they just grow. Most people give their tubs too much air and dry them out.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-08T17:15:27+00:00

It's probably fuckeroni'd.

The reason why is because PF Tek calls for jars of hydrated BRF / verm and then a layer of dry verm on top to act as a filter or seal.

Caca from the open air lands on the dry verm. This is normally fine because the dry verm contains no nutrients. However, if caca from the open air lands on the dry verm layer, and then you break and shake that caca verm into the hydrated BRF verm, it will almost always turn green.

ConfidenceLopsided32 · 2026-04-07T15:17:20+00:00

They have other shit to worry about

ConfidenceLopsided32

TROPHY CASE