mimzy

It's impossible to tell from macroscopic photos if a material contains asbestos or not. Wear a mask, take a small sample and send it into an accredited testing facility.

You'll also need an DOA import permit, so add another $300 on to your costs.

You shouldn't find Trich sp. inside stipe or cap tissue, but you will regularly find pseudomonas which can be easily cleaned up with amp. I also wipe down my specimens with h2o2 and tear them open rather than cutting. This is important because often contaminants can be introduced into the the tissue by the knife as it passes through the 'dirty' surface layer. Also, where is the contamination popping up? If at the inoculation site then this would be consistent with specimen contam, but if elsewhere then maybe your plate wasn't sealed? With love, Mimz

Yes they are no longer selling it, but bunnings still has stock they refuse to take a loss on. Perhaps you could forward to bunnings?

Great photo of the gills by the way.

The only way I know of recovering a strain from mites is to slow freeze your culture in 15% glycerol /water. Freezing will kill the mites but your cultures should be ok. I was lucky most of my plates were sealed with parafin tape and avoided disaster. Any new clones from fruit bodies collected el-natural go straight in isolated eskie until I can confirm they are ok. It leaves in awe of how finely balanced our ecosystems are; in the lab its always one victor over another... whether thats mold, mites or moths.

When it rains, it pours hey. Fantastic work Zen! Can't wait to get this one into culture.

A field guide to Australian fungi - my first and favourite guide book. Brings back great memories of tramping around the forests, learning every fungi in sight.

Also got a refund.

I had a dactylium in mine- proved it with aseptic agar culture. When I emailed them, they already knew about the problem but hadn't recalled it because they are too cheap. Apparently they are no longer producing the grain, or importing it...

(1) For the love of all things good in this world, do not store more grain than you have to; or at least store it properly. For most of my commercial cultures I use organic wheat grain. Some time ago I bought 30kg sack, thinking I would cut down on costs by buying in bulk. The first sign of trouble was a few pantry moths flying around the lab. No problems I thought, I'll leave the sack out in the sun for the day to kill off the weevils and store it in another room. Well, it turns out the sack was infested, and with the humid warm conditions of late summer, I soon had 100's of moths in all my rooms, in all my medias, in all my grains, in all my supplements, in all my everything! (2) Put your agar plates in the fridge as soon as they have set. Leaving agar plates out on the bench for extended periods of time gives mites (YES MITES) a chance to crawl in, contaminate your plates with asper. sp and/ or lay eggs that will ruin your culture later. Don't try to save your plates; freeze them to kill the mites and throw away. Again, this time of year is particularly bad with high humidity. (3) If you can avoid it, don't have any timber in your clean space- given enough time and moisture you can have a mold city growing under benches, which you wont know about, absolutely loading the air with spores. Keep it stainless or plastic. Learn from my mistakes fellow mycologists. With love, Mimz