Grow Kit Troubleshooting

We are unable to provide support by email, sorry.

Instead, we’ve created this troubleshooting guide!

If you are still stuck, please check out excellent forums like the shroomery!

Notes

SpawnTubs, SpawnPots, etc…

Whenever we speak of SpawnTubs, we are also referring to other spawn products such as the smaller SpawnPots etc!

Temperature

If you cannot keep your house warm, you are going to struggle growing mushrooms unless you build or buy an incubator.

So you’ve got a gourmet spore syringe from a vendor, but you can barely see anything in the syringe?

First off, don’t panic. As long as you bought your gourmet spore syringe from a reputable vendor, your syringe will probably be A-OK.

Whilst we only sell microscopy spore syringes, there’s not a week that goes by that we don’t have at least one concerned customer asking things like “What are those black bits in the syringe” or “Where are the spores” etc.

It might sound a bit of a no brainer to some, but for those new to the microscopy scene who haven’t invested in their ‘scope yet, any dots you can see aren’t individual spores — those are clumps of spores that you’re seeing.

If you have a freakishly amazing set of magic eyes, you may be able to see a galaxy of spores within our syringes, but if you’re a mere mortal like us, then you will only be able to see the clumps of spores.

A typical spore syringe has tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of spores. And just because you might not be able to see each of them with your naked eyes, doesn’t mean they aren’t there and also doesn’t mean you can’t sit and count them with your microscope (for a few days).

If you don’t have a microscope to verify the spore syringe has plenty of spores, then think about who you’re buying the syringe from, are they established with actual genuine customer feedback? Are they new?

Forget about spore density, the more important question is – do you actually trust where the spores came from and the species they should be?! Can you imagine the evening you’d be having if what you thought was Cyclocybe aegerita (Pioppini) for your nice family stew turned out to be Psilocybe cubensis…?

Only trust legit vendors, but in the end it’s up to you if you want to give them the benefit of the doubt. And it might help to invest in a microscope before blindly (without a ‘scope) accusing a vendor of not enough spores in their syringe. As it would be rather self-defeating for a business to risk their reputation in sending a poor product.

For us, we need to make sure that every single droplet from our microscopy syringes has plenty to look at on a glass slide. Seeing a river of trichoderma floating past is a bad look.

But for your gourmet spore syringes, stop trying to work out what’s good or not with your bare eyes and focus on getting as clean a syringe as you can from as trusted a vendor as you can and then make sure you are inoculating properly and following the correct temps.

When we speak of spores and mushroom cultivation, we are speaking of legal mushroom cultivation with a gourmet species of mushroom. We will never provide advice for species which are illegal to grow, and this also includes our entire ‘for microscopy’ range.

Research the law.

SpawnTub (Before Inoculation)

If you’ve received contaminated spawn, do not open it because you may need to send it back to us.

Rest assured that contamination it’s extremely rare and we will fix it immediately so get in touch.

But, let us explain our process for creating our spawn so that you don’t think we are sloppy…

We place our spawn containers within autoclavable bags before heat-sealing them. After this, we cart them to a room which houses the digital autoclave (passing a HEPA filtered corridor on the way there).

Spawn is then placed within an autoclave, filled with pure distilled water and the timer is set to precisely 90 mins at a pressurised steam temperature of 121°C.

After sterilisation and cool down, spawn containers are emptied from the autoclave and passed through a hatch in the wall to a suited up member of staff within the Cleanroom and placed infront of a 12ft laminar flow hood (yes, 12 foot!).

Once the spawn container is removed from its autoclavable bag, it’s then placed inside an extra polypropylene container along with a dessicant sachet and finally sealed shut.

Dessicant dries the entire surface of the spawn product of residual moisture from the steam sterilisation to quickly starve stealth ninja microbes which may have snuck past our other defenses.

Spawn is then moved out of the Cleanroom and into our packaging area where they are boxed, labelled and put on the shelves.

Our process is comprehensive, but it’s not perfect. If machinery breaks down (like our autoclaves), then we will not know if the spawn has had the full sterilisation run.

Some spawn containers become a little warped after coming out of the autoclave. After all, they are made of plastic.

If you believe the spawn container is so bad that it’s unusable, do not remove it from the packaging but get in touch immediately for us to investigate and help sort it out.

If you notice a cracked spawn container before you’ve used it, contact us immediately.

Sometimes our spawn products are straight out of the autoclave, bagged, sealed, boxed, labeled and on their way to you the same day…

When spawn products are this fresh, the grain inside them can appear a little wet for the first couple of days. It’s always the same.

Give the spawn a shake so that it absorbs into the grain.

If the inside of the container appears wet, it’s probably because the spawn is so fresh that the dessicant hasn’t had time to dry it all out yet.

This is just what brand new, fresh spawn does.

Again, any concerns.. Just give it more time before opening if you prefer.

Research the law.

SpawnTub (after inoculation)

Contamination affects every spore syringe in some way, but most of the time it poses little threat to your grow and you don’t notice an issue.

Yes, some vendors / syringe producers make such an arse of it that mycelium has no chance against the microbes. But fortunately, decent producers take pride in their cleanliness and spore supply chain.

Vendors aren’t always at fault for a particularly bad spore syringe either – irrecoverable contamination can happen at any point in the production chain from mushroom cultivation labs to spore printing or even whilst packaging prints into baggies. An open window, a lazy employee, a dirty hand, even microbes finding their way through laminar flow hood HEPA filters.

The final product is only as clean as the weakest link in the chain.

But the inescapable truth is the weakest link in the entire chain is usually the end-user about to use the syringe. The vendor can’t control their set up or give them a borrow of a professional lab to use.

If you want to have near perfect results every time, invest in a Cleanroom, laminar flow hood and develop years worth of experience in this hobby.

But if you are looking to avoid all of that expense and settle for 90% success, build or buy yourself a SAB and understand how to properly use it – there is a difference. Learning how to use agar means being able to take a rife syringe and turn it into clean culture to work with – and for many experienced growers, that’s exactly how they start every grow.

And never ever underestimate the importance of temperature. When we tell you there’s no such thing as a 100% clean spore syringe, we mean it – follow correct temps so that the environment favours the mycelium rather than the microbes.

Try to avoid reusing syringes if you can. If reusing a needle, flame sterilise until it’s glowing red hot and allow it to briefly cool before piercing through a rubber injection port. Never wipe needles with alcohol wipes, they will not sterilise a needle (or the inside of one!).

Don’t mistake natural waste products of mycelium (metabolites / yellowing) as being a contaminate, it’s quite normal to see in your spawn.

And leave the SpawnTub well alone. Keep it in the box. Don’t keep touching it. The rim of the lid is a weak point, as are HEPA filters when you are dealing with microbes as small as 1 micron in size!

So you think nothing is happening because you can’t see mycelium, but are you really sure?

Look for common signs of contamination like sweating or condensation – that sometimes suggests (not always) that heat is being generated from active microbe growth inside the SpawnTub.

Although condensation can also be a sign of unstable or uneven temps – which can in turn lead to microbes taking over if you aren’t careful. And whilst we’re on this topic, never use heatmats!

A sure way to detect contamination is smelling around the SpawnTub filter for anything peculiar.

If you are certain there’s no contamination, it could be down to the particular species being a slower coloniser. It can even be genetics, trying to control mother nature at home or in a lab isn’t guaranteed.

There have been many times we’ve not seen mycelium for many weeks and it still turned out to be excellent, healthy, fully colonised spawn.

Another thing to always make sure of is that you are thoroughly rattling your gourmet spore syringes off a surface immediately prior to using, this helps unstick the spores from the plastic syringe walls so they distribute a bit better into the water.

You will almost always find that the last squirt of a syringe will be the most potent, as all the spores are dragged down and out with the rubber syringe plunger.

If you only need 3ml to inoculate a SpawnTub, you will be better finding a 3ml spore syringe for it over a 12ml syringe. The reason being, you know all the spores will come out as you push the plunger all the way to the bottom.

…with a 12ml, the vast majority of spores will still be stuck there on the walls of the syringe until you’ve finished it. Plus, it’s lightyears cleaner not reusing syringes and risking cross contamination.

Never reuse a syringe which you are unsure of, and always flame sterilise the needle tip until glowing red hot between inoculations of other SpawnTubs.

Sometimes you can’t see anything happening because of…

Impatience

Being a part of the online mushroom community for close to 20 years, we know impatience is rife. We’re all guilty of it when it’s a cool new hobby and we are dying to see results!

We are reminded every day of just how impatient folks can be from not putting order numbers in cash envelopes, missing postage stamps, typing wrong addresses, not using order numbers in payment refs when paying by bank, not clicking ‘I Have Paid’ etc… We aren’t picking on anyone, that’s just our world.

But worst of all — impatience is likely to ruin a grow if it’s not addressed and controlled, meaning lost time and money (but a valuable lesson, at least). Once our kits are used, that’s it — we take zero responsibility for how they are used (or misused) and any warranties become null and void.

Our guide is a double sided A4 piece of paper. It’s certainly not comprehensive, but for some it’s quite in-depth. We just try to get a decent balance.

Leave the SpawnTub alone

Picking up a SpawnTub every half hour isn’t going to speed things up – it just increases the chance of microbes getting in via the rim of the lid or through the air filter.

Plus, it disturbs the grain and any mycelial colonies which are trying to join their hyphaes.. slowing everything down to a crawl and jeopardising the grow.

Leave the SpawnTubs alone and forget about them – stop handling them, keep them totally still and clean. And if you are planning to shake the grain at 40-50% to speed things up, you can but there will always be an extra risk for that time gain – plus mycelium can just decide to stall every now and again.

Dead or inactive spores

First off, dead or inactive spores are rare unless they are very very old or the species of mushroom it came from has been firing blanks.

We’ve injected gourmet spores into a boiling hot (just out of the pressure cooker) SpawnTub for fun and watched over the following weeks it grow with healthy mycelium. We even froze a spore syringe once, thawed it and used it successfully too.

It’s pretty hard to kill spores unless you’re trying to.

When buying from a reputable vendor, please give them the benefit of the doubt that they aren’t sending “dead spores” because chances are they’ve not and it’s something else above which is your culprit.

Sometimes your SpawnTub is going to plan, then it’s not.

It can be hard to determine what’s going on, but let’s look into the reasons why this can happen.

First off, are you really sure it has stalled?

We recommend tracing around the mycelium line with a Sharpie and then checking it after a couple of days for growth. Slow growth isn’t the same as stalled growth.

Temperature

Mycelium will stop growing (or slow down dramatically) when it’s cold. But the multifaceted issue here is that microbes won’t stop growing…

So this could essentially be a temperature or a contamination issue (or maybe even both!).

If your temps are too high or too low or unstable (leading to excess condensation and water buildup) and microbes get out of hand, your mycelium can be outrun by microbes.

Contamination comes in many forms.. some grow green and others you can barely see, but they basically all give off a bad smell in our experience. Give the filter a smell.

Shaking the SpawnTub

Shaking the SpawnTub to speed up colonisation is standard practise in this hobby, but if you take a look around online forums you will find that it doesn’t come without its own risks..

Mycelium deciding to stall for no apparent reason is just one of them.

Or microbes managing to get in through the weakest parts of the container during the shake.

Remember that every grow kit has it’s own weak points – for bag style grows, those tend to be the HEPA filter and the injection ports (which sometimes don’t seal after injection) as well as tiny punctures on the bag.

For our SpawnTubs, the weakest point is around the rim of the lid and of course the HEPA filter.

Bacteria is even smaller than a mold spore, at 1μm in size. The rim of the SpawnTub lid won’t pose much of an obstacle to getting through if you aren’t careful, especially when you pair this with issues like unstable temperatures (leading to excess condensation inside the SpawnTubs)…

Here’s what you can do – leave the SpawnTubs alone, don’t disturb them. Forget about them whilst they are doing their thing. If you are going to shake them, be aware of the risks and keep it to an absolute minimum for the highest success rates.

Weak mycelium

Sometimes mycelium is just too weak to recover from a shake.

If you want to avoid the slim chance of this happening with you, don’t shake the grain to try to speed up the grow.. yes your colonisation times will be slower but your overall success rate will be higher.

Our syringe handling and inoculation tips for all growers

Do

Do purchase spores from a vendor you trust
Do remember individual spores are too small to see without a microscope
Do keep syringe handling to a minimum and only when neccessary
Do make or buy a SAB (or Flowhood) to perform inoculations – it’s worth it
Do inoculate with brand new, clean, surgical face mask and gloves
Do carefully, cleanly and swiftly unwrap and attach the needle to syringe
Do rattle syringe off a surface to unstick and distribute stuck spores
Do try to avoid reusing syringes
Do remember the last squirt of a syringe will contain the most spores
Do incubate SpawnTub(s) at a consistent, recommended temperature
Do keep SpawnTub handling to a minimum and only when neccessary
Do flame sterilise needle between SpawnTubs when reusing syringes
Do flame sterilise needle after use and attach needle sheath for storage
Do store syringe cool and in its light-blocking, protective packaging
Do use our products legally

Don’t

Don’t rush syringe inoculation. Plan for cleanlinless and efficiency
Don’t flame sterilise an already sterile needle.. What’s the point?
Don’t try to ‘sanitise’ or ‘sterilise’ a needle with an alcohol wipe
Don’t touch the rim of the SpawnTub lid or the pink HEPA filter – ever
Don’t inject too much solution – 3ml syringe per SpawnTub max
Don’t think spore syringes are totally free of contaminates – they’re not
Don’t use a spore syringe you don’t absolutely trust the vendor of
Don’t break the law with our products

Research the law.

Notes

MonoBox, MiNO, etc…

These products are basically the same thing as each other, with the main difference being container and size. They are simply the mixture of colonised spawn and substrate, so all of the troubleshooting advice applies to each.

Temperature (Again, sorry.)

If you cannot keep your house warm, you are going to struggle growing mushrooms unless you build or buy an incubator.

MonoBox went bad (before full colonisation)

Just think of the conditions mushrooms grow in nature.. nothing is sterile.

The MonoBox you’ll be preparing your substrate in and mixing spawn into won’t be sterile either.. But it doesn’t need to be.

The thing that needs to be sterile, to have any realistic chance of growing mushrooms at home with success, is the spawn you’re using.

Given the right conditions, good spawn will colonise substrate faster than most microbes ever could.

But again, only when the conditions are right.

Low temps will slow mycelial growth, and even lower will stall growth completely.

The risky situation arises when microbes keep growing at their normal rate whilst the mycelium is growing slow… things can get out of control pretty fast and you will probably end up needing to toss your MonoBox. Not good.

Mushroom mycelium is stronger and faster than most microbes, so it’s your responsibility to provide the correct incubation temperature for success.

There’s a whole world of microbes which love holidaying in the heat.

If you are hitting incubation temps of 28C+, you can expect the growth of mycelium to have hit its peak but other microbes to grow exponentially.

Keep temps down to avoid bacteria and other nasties gatecrashing your MonoBox.

When we give temperature requirements, please stick to them unless you absolutely know better for your species.

And when we give a temperature, we mean a stable consistent temperature – not one which goes up and down over the course of the day, the tell-tale signs of this being excessive condensation which can be quite bad for your kit.. as microbes LOVE water.

Sometimes people rush it and get away with it, other times it just comes back to bite them.

While it doesn’t matter for the prepared substrate to be fully sterile (after all you’ll be mixing it together with spawn in the open air probably), it does matter if you’re mixing in any uncolonised or contaminated grain.

Even a few loose, nutrient rich grains which haven’t seen mycelium are at high risk of going bad quickly when introduced to microbes.

Before mixing spawn with substrate, you’ve really got to make sure it’s all healthy and that it’s completely finished colonising because contamination will spread around the entire substrate if you aren’t careful.

Inspect the SpawnTub and look for anything unusual. Sometimes you will see yellowing and this isn’t usually a bad sign but rather an indicator of metabolites – a natural waste product from the mycelium and nothing to worry about.

If nothing appears to look bad, use your nose, because the biggest indicator of a problem is a bad smell. Open the lid and give it a good whiff (but never before full colonisation obviously).

Earthy mushroom smells are good. Sour, sweet or pretty much anything else is bad. If in any doubt, head over to a forum like shroomery.org/forums and have a look their 20+ years of knowledge and descriptions of contamination. OR ask someone if you are still unsure.

Remember – the substrate itself isn’t very nutrient rich, and any nutrients it does have are slow releasing. Unlike the fast releasing, nutrient rich grains – which microbes will salivate over.

Only when you are sure that mycelium has covered 100% of the grains (and that it smells good) are you ready to move on to the substrate stage. And it won’t do any harm giving the colonised SpawnTub a few days longer to be on the safe side.

We’ve seen friends grows fail with no reasonable explanation other than their houses being quite damp and moldy.

If we can suggest some basics here – never open contaminated or mouldy foods in your home. Even a gentle breeze from an open window can send microbes everywhere.

If you notice something go mouldy, dispose of it carefully. Be careful with vacuums, they can throw immense amounts of dust through the filters (we would never vacuum in an area where there is a grow kit).

I think most of us have lived in or experienced a moldy home in our lives, it’s nothing to be ashamed of and it is still possible to have success but requires a little more effort and tools like a SAB become critical.

Avoid the worst culprit rooms like kitchens, bathrooms and cupboards filled with old dusty stuff.

While rare, sometimes mycelium is just weak. Genetics are a lottery.

A possible indicator of weak mycelium is when it’s taking a long time for a SpawnTub to finish colonising.

Usually that tends to only happen after many generations of Grain to Grain (G2G) transfers.

Either way, not a lot which can be done other than starting over again.

When following the instructions for preparing the coir-based substrate, always make sure to use a clean microwave.

Another note here is that not all microwaves are made the same, for example we have two of them which both say 900W but one of them is consistently faster at cooking things.

If in doubt, give your substrate a couple of minutes longer cooking time than our instructions say.

Research the law.

MonoBox went bad (after full colonisation)

Temperature during fruiting isn’t as contamination sensitive as it is during the incubation stage, but it’s certainly not immune from going bad when subjected to incorrect temps.

In order for the mycelium to hold its ground, stay strong and develop hyphal knots on the substrate surface (the mushroom pinheads you want), you need to maintain a good fruiting temperature like you did with your incubating SpawnTubs.

Our kit uses the process of evaporation to create it’s own humid environment and as you know, evaporation only happens with heat – please also read 3 “Not enough evaporation leading to water pooling on the substrate”

The fruiting stage is way more exposed to open air and humidity. And with it, microbes.

The MonoBox should only ever be moved to fruiting stage when you know it’s 100% covered in white mushroom mycelium, all the way through.

It won’t do any harm giving the colonised MonoBox a few days or a week longer to really be on the safe side. Better late than never.

We all know that cool temps slow the process of evaporation whilst warm temps increase it.

Standing water can become rife with bacteria and mold growth in as little as 24 hours, so of course we want to make sure to mitigate this by sticking to the right temps.

If you see pools of water touching the substrate, dab them with a paper towel.

Do not mist our MonoBox grow kit with water, it’s unneccessary unless you have a really good reason to (like trying to salvage from a dry looking cake or something)

Double check temperatures and ensure there’s enough fresh air exchange to promote evaporation from the surface of the substrate (which will also promote pin development) – but not too much, or you will dry out the cake.

This issue can crop up at pretty much any stage in your grow, but more commonly after the spawning to substrate stage.

To avoid repetition, please see troubleshooting MonoBox went bad (before full colonisation) — Environmental Factors

This issue can show it’s head at pretty much any stage in your grow — though it’s more likely to spot it during earlier stages from inspecting the spawn with your eyes and nose, which is hard to avoid when you are mixing it all together by hand!

To avoid extra repetition, please see troubleshooting MonoBox went bad (before full colonisation) — Bad Spawn

An issue like weak mycelium would usually have cropped up during spawn and substrate colonisation first. But we don’t have much experience with weak mycelium ourselves, so wouldn’t like to give wrong info. Let’s just say it’s rare.

To avoid extra repetition, please see troubleshooting MonoBox went bad (before full colonisation) — Weak Mycelium

Should be a non-issue as long as you followed the substrate preparation instructions and made sure to inspect the colonised substrate with your eyes and nose first before moving to the fruiting stage.

To avoid extra repetition, please see troubleshooting MonoBox went bad (before full colonisation) — Dirty Substrate

Research the law.