81 replies to this topic

[Lazlo]

After Golly's spore germination in peroxide thread, it came to my attention for the uses of salt in minimal amounts to be used for cleaning up dirty prints, cultures exc. I think the most of us know that salt will nearly knock any kind of contaminate back severely, but at the same time it has the same effect on mushroom mycelium and their spores as well. So i'm going to attempt to use salt in a minimal amount on a plate of MEA for a Sparassis herbstii (Cauliflower mushroom) and a print I took of a wild Blewit mushroom on paper that's certainly dirty because of the manner in which I took and handled the print. So lets see what will happen here. I'll post pictures of the plate and print as soon as my damn camera gets back here.

[chimp]

Please do keep us posted. Sounds completely reasonable to me.

[SharkieJones]

Speaking of salt i soak my perlite in a salt water mixture for my tubs. The water evaps and the salt stays in the perlite keeping it fresh to re-wet. Works great.

[Hippie3]

great, i'd love to see more work done with salt,
my initial experiments seemed promising

[fastfred]

Speaking of salt i soak my perlite in a salt water mixture for my tubs. The water evaps and the salt stays in the perlite keeping it fresh to re-wet. Works great.

Watch out... A saturated salt solution will create a 75% humidity environment. Salt solutions are often used to claibrate hygrometers.

MgCl creates 33% RH and NaCl (salt) creates 75%.

You probably wouldn't want salt in your perlite.


-FF

[golly]

It's only the slightly damp salt that will lower the RH,,,Where as, wet salt would have no effect because it's already saturated..
I remember Stamets talking about weak saline solutions for contam prevention in one of his books but dont know what concentration levels..

Could be a worthwhile project Laz...Gluk..

[Hippie3]

http://archives.myco...html?1060688279

[Lazlo]

Ok, lets get the ball rolling here. I think i'm going to use a dry Pleurotus eryngii mushroom that I got from Waylit instead of the Sparasiss. I have no use in the Sparasiss for now. Maybe we'll try that one later. So it's the Blewit for dirty spores and dried eryngii for dirty tissue.

[Lazlo]

Hmm, i'm thinking the most accurate way to start off with this project is to use 5 mills of salt/X amount of sterile water. What do you think? I was going to salt the agar after I poured it, but that wouldn't really be accurate and not everybody uses agar either.

I think i'll just do that. I'll mix up a couple of different batches of saline water to see how the mixtures taste. Heh. I want the mixture have a minimal taste of salt to start off with. Sounds silly, but it'll be the easiest way for me to get a good starting point for this project.

[golly]

Maybe the recommended salt consentration for preserving food could be one reference point..

[Lazlo]

Ack! It doesn't taste so good. Heh. Well, let's start here I guess. First mixture is..........

150mills water/1.25mills of NON iodized salt

I'll start photography after the jars have cooled down and are inoculated.

[Lazlo]

Well, here's the round 1 project. King Oyster on the left and the Blewit multispore on the right. I allowed the spores and dry tissue about 10 minutes to soak in the saline solution and then inoculated the plates of MEA. I streaked the Blewit plate quite a few times to be sure I got some spores on it. I ment to use a sterile syringe for that plate, but forgot and had already gotten started. So lets see what happens. Nothing thrilling as of yet. :lol:

http://mycotopia.net...=1&d=1167354347

http://mycotopia.net...=1&d=1167354347

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[Lazlo]

Well i've got action on both plates, but what the action is who knows. It doesn't look good for the King plate, but it does look like it's trying to fire up. There's a spot on that plate with mycelium, but it's not comming from the inoculant. The Blewit plate has a single spot of mycelium, but that may not be good either. Hopefully the Blewit plate will at least show more points of germination by evenings end. I'll know more tommorrow.

[Hippie3]

thx for update
was the salt used
ordinary iodized table salt ?

[Lazlo]

Yep, plain table salt. Non-iodized

[Lazlo]

Well, both plates are looking promising. But there's only 2 points of germination with the Blewit plate. I totally screwed up that plate. I should've dumped out the excess saline water after the solution was mixed properly so the spore solution wasn't so diluted. Lesson learned. The King plate's looking good also, but the only growth is comming from a tiny piece of tissue that fell off of the larger chunk. I've yet to be able to figure out why the hell tiny inoculations work so much better for dry tissue cloning? I noticed the same thing with a Morchella project as well. My only guess is that the smaller inoculation simply stays hydrated better than the larger one. Heck if I know. I'll post pictures sunday night so they are easier to see.

[Hippie3]

[TVCasualty]

thx for update
was the salt used
ordinary iodized table salt ?

The iodine would seem to me to have an effect on this experiment, though I could be wrong. I just remember using it to disinfect water when camping (though not table salt, it was pure iodine, but it takes very little iodine to disinfect water...).

[Lazlo]

Here's the update. So far so good huh? I'll let these fill up with mushroom mycelium to see if a contaminate shows up in the mean while.

http://mycotopia.net...=1&d=1168216443

http://mycotopia.net...=1&d=1168216443

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[Lazlo]

Hmm, I should've used a better back ground there instead of white! Geeze. You can see the mycelium right? The Blewit mycelia is under the lable.