POS, if you are living in the same building as your ladies your CO2 levels are more often than not, very high. I have been monitoring the CO2 indoors all summer and it is amazing how much breathing makes. If I close the windows for 2-3 days to run the AC it gets as high as 2500ppm.
ours never got that high with the grow in a basement. 3 people and
2 dogs living in the house and i had a sentinel CHHC4 for monitoring.
~700 ppm was the highest i ever saw. maybe your controller isn't
calibrated properly? maybe mine wasn't calibrated properly? lol
That'd be awesome if you could lay out a "how to" or point me to a few resources on the subject.
I briefly researched making my own co2 bag but gave up in the process. Was wondering if I could just take a portion out as seed material and put it in some fresh substrate.
My worms are sadly skinny lately..lol. Stopped tending when the bins filled up. Been working on taking better care of them lately.
it will require a bit of reading, but i can point you in the right direction.
here are the basics of the terminology-
spawn is material you use for expanding a fungal colony. when you
referred to your co2 bag as a seed culture, it would actually be called
spawn. spawning is the act of mixing spawn with substrate. spawn
can be grains, sawdust, or mulch. you can also use an otherwise
exhausted substrate for fungal expansion, as is the case with your
CO2 bag. grains are the most nutritionally dense and are loaded with
bacterial endospores, so they require sterilization.
substrate is the material the fungal colony is living on and feeding off
of. there are primary and secondary decomposers in the world of fungi,
primary decomposers live on stuff like mulch, sawdust, straw, or lawn
thatch. they have enzymes to break down lignin, which are unique to
fungi and some bacteria. secondary decomposers live on materials
that have been chemically changed by the digestion of other organisms,
dung loving mushrooms would be an example. the horse or cow eats
grass, poops it out, then the fungi eat the partially decomposed grass.
you use two techniques for preparing spawn and substrate, pasteurization
and sterilization. pasteurization is used for substrates, sterilization is
typically used for spawn. pasteurization of substrates occurs between
140-160F, sterilization is 250F+.
that is the basis of the terminology, but there are plenty more things to
learn about the process. i would recommend mycotopia to learn about
mushrooms. shroomery has more members, but there are so many trolls!
i'm one of the mods there, go by kcmoxtractor.
here's a link, feel free to lurk or become a member. if you register, message
me your handle name here on RIU and i can get your membership approved
and tell you how to get permissions for the rest of the board. we have global
board posting board restricted for new members because we used to have
terrible problems with spammers and spam bots.
https://mycotopia.net/
coons got into my worms bins, did a pretty mean number on them. i had 4x
18 gallon totes filled with worms... now i might have 1.5-2.