MonoBox Grow Kit — Troubleshooting

1. Nature’s temperature preferences (not ours)

There’s a reason why we prefer to close during winter – it’s not because we adore the extended holiday (because too much Netflix couch potatoing eventually makes you question your sanity!).

We close because a lot of people are understandably too broke to keep their houses toasty, but not too broke to buy our kits.

The result of which is us getting much of the blame for failed grows, like it’s somehow our products fault that nature refuses to play ball in a cold UK home.

Without an incubator, it’s far too expensive to maintain decent temperatures for grow kits during winter.

Not trying to use this as a pitch for our CyLab guys, but, if you use it as a guide to building your own then you can grow all year round (without the huge energy bills). We don’t mind anybody pinching the design for themselves — just not to sell.

2. Gourmet spore syringe inoculation problems

2.1 Are you feeling unsure about your gourmet spore syringe?

2.1.1 Can’t See (M)any Spores

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 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.

2.2 Disclaimer

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.

3. SpawnTub problems (before inoculation)

3.1 Opened the SpawnTub from the carboard box and can see a problem!

3.1.1 Contaminated SpawnTub

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

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

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

We place our SpawnTubs 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).

SpawnTubs are 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, SpawnTubs 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 SpawnTub is removed from its autoclavable bag, it’s then placed inside a new PP bag along with a dessicant sachet and finally heat-sealed shut.

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

SpawnTubs are then moved from the Cleanroom to 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 SpawnTubs have had their full sterilisation run.

If you are quite clued up, you might have heard about those little steam sterilisation strips which change in colour after sterilisation…

We’ve seen competitors throwing these in with grow kits to ‘prove’ their stuff is sterile. Marketing porkies, and here’s why:

Those strips will show a false positive regardless of whether the kit is sterile or not, because the strips just need to get to 121°C for 20mins to change colour…

They are made for sterilising scalpels and other tools — not mushroom spawn or substrate which can need up to a few hours at 121°C depending on volume and density.

Sorry, just having a wee bit of a rant about the nonsense we see too often.

Contamination is rare for us. Get in touch, don’t use it and don’t open it.

3.1.2 Warped SpawnTub

Some SpawnTubs become a little warped after coming out of the autoclave. After all, they are made of thin polypropylene plastic.

We will never send an excessively deformed SpawnTub to anyone as we do have standards.

If you believe the SpawnTub we have sent is so bad that it’s unusable, do not remove it from the packaging and get in touch with us immediately for us to investigate and sort it out.

3.1.3 Cracked SpawnTub

If you experience a cracked SpawnTub, do not remove it from the packaging and please get in touch with us immediately.

3.1.4 Dry SpawnTub

Every now and again, someone gets in touch to say the SpawnTub looks too dry.

Trust us when we say it’s not. If you are still adamant, you can get in touch and we can look into it – but it’s doubtful there’s anything wrong with the spawn.

3.1.5 Wet SpawnTub

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

When SpawnTubs 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 SpawnTub a shake within it’s bag (ie. don’t remove it from the bag yet) and the moisture should almost absorb into the grains.

If the inside of the bag appears a little wet, it simply means the SpawnTub is so fresh that the dessicant hasn’t even had the time to dry the bag yet.

This is just what brand new, fresh SpawnTubs do.

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

4. SpawnTub problems (after inoculation)

4.1 After injecting the SpawnTub(s) and leaving to incubate, I noticed a problem.

4.1.1 Contamination

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!

4.1.2 Nothing is happening

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!

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.

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.

4.1.3 Stalled growth

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

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.

Shaking the SpawnTub to speed up colonisation is standard practise in this hobby, but it doesn’t come without 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.

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.

4.1.4 Tips for Successful Inoculation

Our syringe handling and inoculation tips for all growers:

Do:

• Purchase spores from a vendor you trust
• Remember individual spores are too small to see without a microscope
• Keep syringe handling to a minimum and only when neccessary
• Make or buy a SAB (or Flowhood) to perform inoculations – it’s worth it
• Inoculate with brand new, clean, surgical face mask and gloves
• Carefully, cleanly and swiftly unwrap and attach the needle to syringe
• Rattle syringe off a surface to unstick and distribute stuck spores
• Try to avoid reusing syringes
• Remember the last squirt of a syringe will contain the most spores
• Incubate SpawnTub(s) at a consistent, recommended temperature
• Keep SpawnTub handling to a minimum and only when neccessary
• Flame sterilise needle between SpawnTubs when reusing syringes
• Flame sterilise needle after use and attach needle sheath for storage
• Store syringe cool and in its light-blocking, protective packaging
• Use our products legally

Don’t:

• Rush syringe inoculation. Plan for cleanlinless and efficiency
• Flame sterilise an already sterile needle.. What’s the point?
• Try to ‘sanitise’ or ‘sterilise’ a needle with an alcohol wipe
• Touch the rim of the SpawnTub lid or the pink HEPA filter – ever
• Inject too much solution – 3ml syringe per SpawnTub max
• Think spore syringes are totally free of contaminates – they’re not
• Use a spore syringe you don’t absolutely trust the vendor of
• Break the law with our products

5. MonoBox went bad (before full colonisation)

5.1 After the SpawnTub(s) finished colonising, I prepared the MonoBox substrate and then mixed the colonised spawn into it. During the incubation process, it started to go bad.

5.1.1 Temperature: Too Low

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.

5.1.2 Temperature: Too High

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.

5.1.3 Temperature: Too Unstable

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.

5.1.4 Bad Spawn

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.

6. MonoBox went bad (after full colonisation)

6.1 Everything was going well after mixing the colonised spawn with the prepared substrate, the MonoBox finished colonising and you had it in the fruiting stage waiting for the wonders to happen and then… boom! It went bad.

6.1.1 Temperature Issues

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 about “Not enough evaporation leading to water pooling on the substrate”.

6.1.2 Substrate Not Fully Colonised

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.

6.1.3 Water Pooling on Substrate

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).

7. MonoBox went bad (after x flushes)

7.1 Got the first flush, but then contamination hit.

Work in progress

7.2 Disclaimer

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.