Fruiting chamber preferences...

[tryptamine]

Hey all..... just about to make up a fruiting chamber for my psilocybe mexicana cakes by drilling heaps of little holes on all sides of a plastic tub. a friend then advised against having any holes.... now im confused..

what do you all think?

i was just gonna have holes in all sides, then the layer of perlie, birth the cakes pre rolled in dry vermiculite and then fan and mist as necessary.

and is it 99% humidity i should keep em at?

thanks all!

[t.platinum]

Dude, in my shortlived personal experiences, holes allow good air exchange but open up your chamber to tons of baddies and usually get you a humidity much lower (like around 75%). If you want holes i reccomend stuffing all the individual holes with cotton swabs so contams are less liketly to enter and water may be less likely to leave.

Personally, i have a air pump hooked up to a bottle filled with water with a hole drilled into the side. This is nice because it creates an air current as well as not drying out your little home. Though the filtration of the air is questionable, I like to think that wrapping the pump in a couple of socks filters many contaminants out.
Like i said, I'm young and stupid, and probably messing up something, but so far this method has done my newb ass some serious good, cutting back on opening the fruiting terrarium and allowing for a more constant humidity. Without any other misting and some perlite, the humidity is right around 86% in a 66-70 degree tank. My bet is that by putting a heating pad (like those used for reptile terrariums) underneath the fruit chamber, and raising the ambient temp to around 75-80 humidity would easily increase to 90%. But again, I am young and quite frankly, more into the act of trying new things out than following the proven successful method.

Good luck and eat lots.

Mingle smith

[(nilla)]

I wouldnt go over board worrying about contams.
Really,cotton for filter?? wouldnt bother...
You need not worry.
Contams are more a prob for when cakes are colonizing "not" when there fully grown and birthed,,,there quite tuff at this point.
For cakes make it simple.
Ive tried everything and more is not better.
Get a decient size storage ben w/lid flip upside down so the cakes sit on lid and lay some damp paper towel under the cakes.
Open to air and presto.

[(nilla)]

Also,dont try the heating pad under the tank deal,,it will dry your cakes out.

[oakchild]

I started with a large Serilite tub and drilled lots of holes in it then covered most of them up with electrical tape. This allows me to control the humidity easily when growing different species. It also has a full spectrum light integrated into the lid running on a timer. I also spray painted the FC black to block light coming in through the sides.

The bottom of the tub has holes for drainage and is filled with about 4inches of perlite. I have hoses from an aquarium pump running into the FC at the bottom underneath the perlite layer. This helps with the humidity and diffuses the air so that there aren't strong air currents in the FC which will spread mess up your fruiting and spread contaminants. It just so happens that my aquarium pump is housed inside a sealed plastic box with a 99.97% HEPA filter for air inlet. This is not really nessasary for the FC, but I built the filtered air pump for air exchange in my LCs and figured I would let it serve 2 purposes.



-Oakchild