Numina

Hi, Recently found some wild mushrooms that I would like to grow. Made up some MYA and tried some tissue cultures. I have been successfully growing oysters for a few years now. My first cultures were cloned from some mushrooms I bought at a local fruit and vege shop. I have had great success ( a few failures) cloning using MYA and tissue cultures. Almost no contaminations with the oysters at every stage of the growing process ( some losses due to Trich at the straw log stage). The thing about oysters is that you can pretty easily get some mycellium from inside the mushroom that has not been exposed to the outside air and so bacterial contamiation is not such a problem. The wild mushrooms I am trying to work with are quite small and I was not able to get any mycellium that was completely from inside the mushroom (most of the mushroom is gills with a very thin layer of mycellium on top of the cap) . I have not tried using the stems but they are very thin and I dont think I could get a tissue sample that did not include some external tissue. All the cultures I made (15) contaminated with slimy bacteria and no growth occurred. I was able to get a very good spore print inside a sterile petri dish from one of the mushrooms. I have only tried germinating from spores (Pearl oyster) once before without success. I dont want to lose this muchroom so am asking for advice on the highest probabilty method to germinate these spores. Spores are only 1 day old. Thanks

There is a US site www.greatscopes.com that has a good write-up on what you should look for when comparing different products (it goes thru all the components and tells you what is cool and what is not). According to the information in that, the microscopesindia stuff seemed to tick all the boxes (including semi-plan objectives, all metal focus and stage gears etc, etc) but I still had an uneasy feeling about the one I was looking at on their ebay ad. I also googled microscopesindia but didn't find it, I think it is only an Ebay shop (this also made me a bit nervous given they had pictures of a slick looking manufacturing facility etc as part of their ebay ad, you'd think if they did have such an impressive looking setup they'd have an independent web site). I don't know how all that ebay vendor stuff works but, rational or not I feel more confident about buying from the US than Asia for something like this. Thanks for the replies.

Thanks Sally, I wasn't too sure about buying from them. I have also been looking at the US sites so I might have another look there. Thanks again.

Hi, has anybody bought a microscope from the "microscopesindia" ebay store? I'm thinking about buying one of their microscopes.

I get that Amazonian. How often do we give someone some information about ourselves only to hear it back in some negative way or have it used against us. That's why I don't have any friends . Its just safer that way.

I tried my kid's toy microscope on a spore print I got from a random mushroom I found in next door's rose garden. Very frustrating. I could see there were spores on the slide at the lower magnifications but could see nothing through the so called 900x lense except a blur. I'm saving my pennies for something decent.

In no way condoning anything illegal, but I cant see how the hell anyone would know. I've never had a random visit from even the local council about some DIY plumbing I might have done. I'd never do any dodgy plumbing BTW . Unless your friend is "known", I would have thought the chances of detection would be negligible.

Plato said the price of not getting involved in the political system is that you get governed by morons (he might have said it a little differently) - how true! The price of getting involved however would be to have to deal with the dickheads all the time - man you'd have to be Mother Theresa to put up with that shit. Sorry to hear about your human rights being violated by the power of the state. Where's the compensation for injurious affection??? Pressure should be put on the judiciary to exercise better judgement when considering applications for these raids when they have obviously proved to be baseless and probably vexatious.

“Both types of Petri dishes can be resterilized using hydrogen peroxide and a microwave oven: Wash the plates thoroughly with dishwashing detergent, taking special care to completely remmove any remaining agar, Pour a small amount of 3% peroxide into each dish and swirl it around to expose it to the entire inside surface of the plate. Repeat with its cover, and place it on the dish, Place the stack of dishes in the microwave and heat on medium power until all of the peroxide on the plates has been driven off, Use the plates immediately, or store them in a clean plastic bag until needed This procedure is most effective when combined with the use of peroxide in agar cultures” (L.G. and K. Ogame, pp35-36, 2006)

I have a book on growing mushrooms that says you can re-use and sterilise the plastic ones by washing them first then swirling a bit of peroxide in both the base and the lid and then putting them in the mircowave until the peroxide evaporates off. I haven't tried it yet.

Hey Psylo, Definitely into gardening. Problem is I suck at it a bit. Never tried it in the nood. Maybe thats where I'm going wrong. The neighbours can be so unreasonable about that sort of thing though. Would be grateful for any donations, thanks. Very droll I_D, I'm hoping I ^^gets it too^^ soon.

Many thanks for your replies. It was the free trading thread I was referring to and I did read the first post quite a few times. While I had a bit of guess at what it meant, I couldn't be sure. The Vs were a complete mystery, I thought they were some kind of diversion or internet black magic to throw the search engines off. The more Vs the stronger the spell lol. When I get something to trade I'll be giving that vee key a bit touch up:) Thanks again.

Hi there, Obviously I'm a noob, I have been reading the trading thread trying to figure out hows this all works. I don't understand the jargon/message format and how to get involved. I don't have anything to trade but would like to participate. Sorry about my ignorance. Could somebody please explain things to me by whatever means is most appropriate. Signed: a bit slow

In Western Australia, under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1981, it is illegal to use, possess, manufacture or supply drugs such as amphetamines, cocaine, ecstasy, hallucinogens and heroin. Offences under this Act carry heavy fines and/or prison sentences. Penalties range from a $2000 fine and/or two years in prison to a $100 000 fine and/or imprisonment for 25 years. A person convicted of a drug offence will receive a criminal record, which can lead to difficulties in getting a job, health insurance, credit or visas for overseas travel. Would be interesting to know where the judiciary is likely to position its sentences on this scale in relation to these recent cases and whether they have any discretion (and are willing to exercise it) not to record a conviction (particularly for the younger offenders). Unbelievable that the cops seem to be putting so many resources into this. Must be a pretty law abiding place otherwise. Maybe they've just had a gut full of stuffing up homicide prosecutions (Mallard etc) so they're going for the easy targets.

I guess it depends on the "street value" or the weight or whatever but what are the penalties being dished out by the courts for this stuff. I thought there were very few prosecutions being pursued by the cops in aus. What's it like in other states?