bosshogg's home made agar tek

[bosshogg]

over the last few days i've been experimenting with some different ingredients to make agar at home. i eventually came up with this recipe which is a combo of a couple different teks with my own twist.

here goes:

1. 4 envelopes of plain jello (clear no added flavor) = 1 small box 1.50 at local grocery store

2. 1 table spoon of dark rye flour - found in health food isle

3. 1 table spoon of potato flakes

4. 2 table spoon of karo

5. 2 table spoon of honey

6. 3 cups of water

mix dry ingredients in in pot and add 1 cup of cold water and stir, let stand for 1 min.
after a min. or so add in 2 more cups of cold water and mix throughly.
turn on the burner and bring your mix to a boil. once the water begins to heat up add in your honey and karo. keep stirring and watch for boil over. once the mix begins to foam up a little turn down the heat and let simmer for 3-5 mins occasionally stirring.
set out your sterilized petri dishes and fill. this mix will fill 20 plates depending on how thick you pour it. after dishes are filled with a nice layer of your mix place in the fridge to cool down.

that's it , after about 2-3 hrs in the fridge the plates are ready to noc up with your favorite medium.

i'm gonna noc up some of these plates tomorrow. ill keep this thread updated with myc grow rates and what not. imo i think these will do quite well.

*enjoy*

[PINKBUFFLVR]

ILL HAVE TO TRY IT!

[bosshogg]

a little update on these plates:

so far so good, 5 plates were noc'd up: 2 with some pulled rhizo's and 3 with myc covered grain out of a couple clone jars.

it's been a few days since inoculation and the myc seems to be recovering well and reaching out to the plate. no contams thus far so i'm pretty happy with the way their going. i'll post some pics when there is more growth.

on a side note; one of the control plates kinda "melted" a little bit. i attribute this "melting" to the jello+heat. the control plate was a little to close to the heat source in the incubator. what i did when i realized it was "melting" was stick it back in the fridge for a couple hours and it firmed back up. the rest of the plates looked fine with no "melt" but were readjusted in the incubator a little farther from the heat source for good measure.

[weeeeeee]

sweet tek boss definitely about to be giving this a shot got any pics of the growth on those dishes yet?

[bosshogg]

not really enough growth atm to post any pics. they've only been going a couple days . all you can see it a tiny bit of myc reaching out to the plate.

[mushhut]

Got me intrested. Ive been spending like $30 to $40 for agar, that only does 20 dishes. Cant wait to see results.

[fungusfarmer]

I buy it at an oriental store, 3 bux makes about a quart. Keep us posted hogg

[bosshogg]

here are the two best plates going atm. the pic marked rhizo, was a tiny piece of rhizo i snagged off the wall of a tub. the other is a tiny piece of grain (cracked corn) that i pulled out of a clone jar. the other plates look good with lots o hairs, but these two were the most photojenic .

these have more then doubled in size since yesterday. where yesterday you could just barely see some tiny myc strans, today they've really blown up. sry the pics look a little fuzzy but you get the idea.

*enjoy*

[buteo]

Damn bosshogg amazing! maybe i can do "agar" work now. Thanks for teyin this alot cheaper for me!

[bosshogg]

like i mentioned in one of the upper posts , watch out for "melt". if this happens you can always stick in the fridge to firm the plate back up.

what i was thinking is this "melt" is not nessarly a bad thing. when i say melt, it doesn't really melt all the way back to liquid. it's more of a gel that you get, and will move around if the plate is tilted.

here's the thought i was having: you can let your plate melt before or after you noc it up. then you can use it as if it were a semi LC. when you have the colonization you want and are ready to cut a chunk out. just stick the plate in the fridge to firm it up and cut out what you want. i would also like to think that if you have a large enough gauge needle you could suck up some of this "gel" and inject it. either way you're pretty much getting the same thing, it really depends on what you're wanting to do with it.

[buteo]

Thankx for the headsup. Sounds like the gel might be easier to just suck up and knock. Like u said a half LC

[catdaddy]

Hey, man- I have had some plates waiting to try agar culture. Can't get agar here.

Bought the materials (it's actually all stuff I keep- I was just out of honey for some damn reason..) Sunday afternoon.

I plan to culture store bought Portabellas for the kitten, and later try to isolate a STRONG rhizo of PE6 and PESH for fun.

Thanks for the tip!

Catdaddy

[bosshogg]

these pics kinda suck but you get the point...
so far so good with these plates this is the rhizo sample from bpk/
there's a lil yellow in there not sure if it's a contam or piss , either way it's still looking pretty good. haven't noticed any contams on the other plates i made. i took a pic of this one because it's the farthest along so far.
myc looking kinda puffy, seems to be some extra moisture in there fluffn it out. probly going to stick this one in the fridge soon so the others can catch up . i'm also hoping it may lose a lil moisture while in the fridge so i can get at some rhizos.

[kcmoxtractor]

have you tried this again? or did you make a transfer with this agar?

[Coughing_Anon]

Yah, I'm interested in how this turned out.
How does it hold up to good ole agar?

[Hippie3]

you know,
agar should not be nute-rich.
the idea is to be barely nutritious enough
to grow mycellia-
making it useful in eliminating contams
and isolating rhizo sub-strains.
your formula is too rich by far
and would contaminate quickly.

[bosshogg]

Originally Posted by Hippie3

you know,
agar should not be nute-rich.
the idea is to be barely nutritious enough
to grow mycellia-
making it useful in eliminating contams
and isolating rhizo sub-strains.
your formula is too rich by far
and would contaminate quickly.

thanks for reminding me hip! i've been meaning to update this lil tek here for sometime now, and i couldn't agree more.

after working with this recipe several times i've learned a few things.

i've had about a 60/40 success rate vs. contams using this method. which has lead me to believe that , yes, the mix is to "rich" if you will, to keep contams down to a minimum.

another thing i was trying to eliminate was; the "melting" of the plates while in the incubator.
after running this experiment a few times, each time reducing the h2o content. i found that the plates would still melt given enough time.

after doing some research i learned that any type of animal gelatin will melt at room temps.
this being said, i would have to recommend using the ol'reliable vegi agar agar . vegi agar agar will hold up at room temps with no probs.

recently i ordered and set up some plates using agar agar with minimal nutis. they've sat in the incubator for a week with no signs of contam or "melt."

i've abandoned this tek i've written up for a more stable formula. i would only reuse this method if i was in a pinch and really needed a plate.

"knowing is half the battle"

*peace*

[Hippie3]

might try pectin

[bosshogg]

oh yeah never even thought about that . i may have to run a side project with pectin and see how that holds up. thx hip!