# Shroom spore exchange!



## Guest (Nov 22, 2005)

Jay Why posted this earlier:
"Maybe this should go with Coreys plant-exchange, but once one person has got their shrooms growing from a print, it would be very easy for them to pass on spores. Chain-mail-like, actually. 

To make a sporeprint is easy - just cut a shroom cap off, place it on a 
notecard, put a bowl over it to keep humidity up and in an hour or so you 
have hundreds of thousands (or more) spores sitting on the card. Put it in a ziplock and stick it in the mail. 

Who's up for spore chain-mail?"

So, I am willing and I hope others are too. Unfourtunately its getting too cold to go shroom collecting in the Northeast, but maybe other places have good stuff??


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## Jay Why (Aug 27, 2005)

From the research I've done it sounds like it can be a bit tricky to get the transplanted spores to take due to differences in substrate/humidity/heat conditions. But than again, most of our tanks should be fairly close, and its so inexpensive to try you have very little to lose.

I might have to go take a field trip to see if I can find some wild shrooms to give a try with also.


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## Guest (Nov 23, 2005)

We can either exchange it on the trade forum, or wait till the plant exchange is up and going. But as for me, I lack the talent to organize this thing, unless someone wants to step in. But its good to know that people would be willing to do this.


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## Jay Why (Aug 27, 2005)

Now... if we could just find someone willing to send out a couple sporeprints.... anyone???

Fun note: Back in the Peace, Love, and Uh-What-Was-I-Saying days, they used to sell psychedelic shroom sporeprints as `art.` That is `art` you can go scrape onto a nice piece of cow dung in field and wait for it to grow. Careful, hippies are smarter than they let on!


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## Guest (Nov 23, 2005)

*spores*

the chances of growing mushrooms straight from a spore print in a viv are extremely remote. i sound like a party pooper but i am talking from experience and there are much easier ways of doing it. http://www.fungi.com has some good equptment and kits. theres nothing to stop you buying a mushroom grow log and putting it in a viv.


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## Jay Why (Aug 27, 2005)

*Re: spores*

I understand its considered difficult. If it can happen by accident though, its obviously not impossible. I'm willing to put a little time and research it to see if there's anything that can be done to improve the chances.

Are there any experiences you think we can learn from? Where were the original shrooms and spores from? What conditions were you trying to introduce them to?


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## Guest (Nov 23, 2005)

*mushrooms*

i have grown them on two occasions once by accident when i bought a piece of bogwood that had mycelium growing all over it and the second time intentionally using dowel spawn which you basically drill a hole in the wood and poke a dowel with the myc. growing on it into and seal it with wax then wait.


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## Guest (Nov 23, 2005)

A few years back I would collect mushrooms before the caps would open, and plant them in the tank so they would continue to live for a bit. Most of them had short life cycles, but they usually kept sprouting new ones in different parts of the viv for a few months. They would all eventually stop coming, probably ran out of nutrients in the tank.


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## Guest (Nov 25, 2005)

Yeah you have to have something dead to feed them, unless of course it's a parasitic species, but those usually just feed on living wood, which, is highly unlikely to exist in a 30 gallon vivarium 

Even if you do get a mycelium to sprout, sometimes you need two mycelia so they can reproduce, for the new one to make a fruiting body.

And even then it could be 2 years before it decides to finally form a fruiting body.


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## Guest (Nov 26, 2005)

*shrooms*

im sure the easiest way to go about growing mushrooms in your viv is to get a mushroom grow log and put it in there with some bromeliads on it or something.


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## Cody (Oct 31, 2004)

In class we reviewed using agar to get mycelium growth. Its been a while but this is what I remember:
1. Prepare agar and sterile petri dishes-very sterile fungus is highly competitive.
2. Prepare spore print
3. Innoculate agar with spores.
4. Wait for agar to be full of mycelium.
5. Cut mycelium covered agar into small peices and introduce it to the medium (ie. substrate)

It may be a special agar, I'm not entirely sure. It just seems to me that introducing mycelium would be much more productive than spores. But I'm not sure on mailing mycelium agar, mailing spores would be a breeze. Maybe the best bet would be to acquire a spore print from someone then prepare your own agar and get some growth. I like this idea and would love to partake.


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## Guest (Nov 26, 2005)

I wonder what kind of agar? Thanks. As for Jay Why's leuteus shrooms, I've read that they often appear in peoples potted plants and in vivs. Which means that those spore prints would be very likely to grow in other vivs. I think hope is the key.


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## Guest (Jan 13, 2006)

*mycorhizae...*

go buy down to earth or plant success innoculants... that way you've got 50 fungus most of which have a fruiting body... it comes in water soluble, granular, and pill form...and all of them are beneficial to the subtrate, some beneficial in fighting pathogenic fungii... we get mushrooms popping in the humid corners of our hydro shop from this mix ALL THE TIME...


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## Guest (Jan 13, 2006)

Where do you get those? I've never heard of this stuff.


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## Guest (Jan 13, 2006)

*myco innoculant.*

http://www.humboldthydroponics.com sells it.

for information, visit plantrevolution.com or downtoearthdistributors.com

also, all of foxfarms solid organic boxed fertilizers contain the following list:
Glomas intraradices, G. aggregatum, g. mosseae, 
Laccaria bicolor
Pisolithus tinctorius
Rhizopogon villosuli, R. armylopogon, R. fulvigleba, R. luteolus,
Scleroderma cepa, S. geastrum, S. citrinum,
plus 6 species of bacillus including subtilis... it costs anywhere from 7.00 a box on up, all i did was sprinkle a little of the foxfarm's rock phosphate on top of my coir, which, by the way, is all lignin, if you've got it your fungus don't need any food.... take care...
robert.


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## Grassypeak (Jun 14, 2005)

Seems likely that introducing a spore print from someone else’s viv might also be a good way to pass on disease. Can mushroom spores tolerate a thorough drying out? That would at least prevent the transference of chytrid and non endospore forming bacteria.


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2006)

*making a spore print from dried spore...*

i did a blingo search for drying mushroom spore, and while often times this type of page can be totally inaccurate, i actually had a friend who grew psilocybes for a while, and this seems right in line with his procedure... he'd get spores from random "shrooms" he'd gotten from people and enjoyed... i'm sure this info applies directly to this topic:



> How to Make a Spore Syringe
> From A Spore Print
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ...


hope that helps... 
Robert.


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2006)

*another dried spore...*

Pleurotus ostreatus (oyster mushroom) if i remember from my catalog, comes innocculated into a dried dowel rod, so thats one more bit of evidence to favor the survival of dried spore... by the way, any of you ever look at any of your collection under a scope? spores come in some amazing shapes... check it out.


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2006)

mushroom spores can most definitely endure a drying out. in fact, they can endure just about anything. there's a theory (albeit an extremely far-out one) that psilocybe spores actually came to earth on an asteroid. While highly unlikely, it is possible. There are also some people (terence mckenna and followers) that believe that psychotropic mushrooms brought about human consciousness.

but getting back on topic, it would be cool to trade some spores around, but I would be surprised if anyone actually got any fruits to sprout up. many mushrooms need pretty sterile conditions in order to let the mycelium take hold of the substrate and fruit.


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2006)

*ha!*

i've heard the asteroid theory... actually mckenna's theory on human conciousness is about the only part of his book i could take seriously... it's an interesting mind bender to think about... i agree, sterility is key, but as i said, in our shop, when humidity is right, we get huge flushes of mushrooms just from our innoculants...


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