Thanks. I have a few questions from time to time and hope to contribute. I'm working now with a liquid culture for a cubensis variety. I am finding the best results with a plain dextrose 4% solution. This or other simple sugar solutions are what others seem to recommend.
When I add other components like trace minerals, growth seems to slow way down. When I add other components like malt, which I might think would be a more complete nutrient, then I see more contamination. I guess I'm puzzled since glucose is just C, H and O. I would think that some nitrogen would be in order to make proteins. So I guess I'll just go back to dextrose. BTW, I'm inoculating the LC with blended colonized PDA with a mycelial isolate. Perhaps the PDA that is initially chunked into the blender contributes enough nutes to start things off.
At one point I used half (75cc) of the LC after 7 days of incubation with a stir bar and I added an extra 75cc of dextrose solution to the LC hoping to restore the LC. It seemed to survive but did not get very dense like the first time. Perhaps nitrogen had been depleted by this time. I plated the LC to check for contams and it looked clean at 4 days with a few mycelial colonies but only about 1/3 as colony dense as the original mature LC.
So I guess my questions are:
1) Agreement on dex or other sugar for LC? VS more complex nutrient solutions?
2) Can you feed your LC and keep it going? If so, then with what? Adding 4% dextrose has not seemed to promote much growth if any at all.