I recently birthed my B+ cakes and cased a few. I place them in a tupperware terrarium with perlite for humidity. I have about 1/2 inch of water below the perlite and the perlite is very wet. i also have a heating pad below my terrarium but the humidity in the terrarium is only 80% (well it fluctuates between 76% and 85%) will this be enough to induce pinning??? hell the room that the terrarium is in has about the same RH. is there any way I can increase my humidity?? This is fuked I don't understand whats up
you're setup for disaster.. a) standing water in your terrarium is going to invite trich contam... b) 1/2 inch of perlite is rediculous, most people use 3-4 inches of well soaked perlite with NO STANDING WATER. c) no that humidity is not high enough.. humidity needs to be between 95-100% to get best results, but atleast 90% to induce pinning. Increase humidity by adding more perlite.. and dont sit your cakes directly on perlite, the fruits can become waterlogged and end up looking like bowling balls and not and mushrooms., i usually but a small layer of vermiculite ontop of the perlite, soak the verm as well, then sit the cake on there. I havent done cakes in awhile though. Best of luck to you my fellow mycologist.
No I have about 2-3 inches of perlite. i have a 1/2 inch of standing water in the terrarium, not the other way around. and I put h202 in the water to keep out contams. Its always worked before, never had this problem. I never place cakes on the perlite I use the lids with vermiculite... I dunno what the hell is wrong maybe Ill add more perlite???
Why are you still working with cakes? thats for super newbs. yeah either more perlite, or what type of lid are you using for you tupperware container?
I only kept 2-3 as cakes I cased the rest of em, but I just added some more perlite and took out all the standing water, mayb the standing water was keeping the perlite from breathing, but after i did this and put on my lid the humidity started droping to 75% but that was only a few minutes after putting o the lid, the lid im usein is the lid that came with the box, I added a layer of tape around the top of the box to seal up the lid, and this is my second terrarium in two weeks the first one had the same issue, I thought the lid wasn't tight enough, so I made sure I got a container and lid that fit together virgin style, real tight like, I dunno what the problem is, In all reality I shouldn't need the heating pad but its the only reason my humidity is as high as its been.... this is fukd!!!!
I fan It, I did have an air pump with a tube leading to an airstone in water, but I took it out because originally I thought it was the problem...
damn man, i really cant think how you arent getting high humidity.. and you sure you're hygrometer is accurate? you should think of making a martha setup or an indoor greenhouse.
I was actually wondering if it could be the meter but its the second one that ive used, they were both the same kind of meters, digital, with a probe on a wire that I put within the terrarium, I got both of them at Lowes, i know they register high humidity, but maybe its because thers no air movement to push by the probe... (ya i'm really grasping at straws now)
Man, I really dont know what to say, im stomped lol. id say drill some holes in the side of your terrarium or on the lid.. FAE is very very important.
If you're new to it and you want a good thing to learn from find a copy of Mushroom Growing Made Easy (i think that's the name, probably easy to get via torrent) it's a video that follows the PF Tek and will visually show you step by step what to do and what everything is supposed to look like.
