Aact - Is This Fungal Hyphae? (microscopy)

[Perception]

I bought the book Compost Tea Making by Marc Remillard. He states on page 69 that in order to pre-activate your compost for fungal growth, to:

"Mix 4 spoonfulls of fine oatmeal (oat flour), powdered baby oatmeal, soybean meal, or oat bran with each cup of slightly moist compost. Put it in a container and keep it at 80deg F for 5 days. Do not stir, mix, or disturb. You should see visible fungal mycelia in 3-5 days, at which point you can use it to make a strong fungal dominated tea"

So I did this, and after 4 days, I have what "looks" like visible mycelia growing all over the compost. BUT, after looking under a microscope at 400x, I'm not convinced that this is the healthy fungus that I want. I don't see many segmented joints. There are lots of little balls inside the strands. Wanted everyone's opinion though: Would you use this in your AACT brew?

Thx.

 

[Perception]

Sooo... my curiousity outweighed my caution, and I started an AACT brew with this an hour ago. I added 2 cups of EW castings and another cup of fresh compost.

I'm not gonna lie... The pre-activated fungal compost smelled kind of ripe. Goes against my gut feeling on this, but just wanted to see how it turned out.

"Hold my beer and watch this."

 

[mandalaman]

Did it smell like poo poo or more of the anaerobic stinky feet smell?

 

[Perception]

More like stinky feet. Definitely.

I would assume that some anaerobic microbes started to multiply in that 5-day pre-activated fungal compost. I'm just hoping that the explosion of aerobic microbes will out-compete them.

 

[mandalaman]

Maybe the compost was too moist? Is that possible?

 

[Perception]

Yes, it definitely could have been too moist.

After looking at Tim Wilsons site a little more, I think that the strands are in fact fungal hyphae. But I believe I also raised some anaerobic microbes in the compost due to the smell.

If this is true, should the beneficial micro organisms out-compete the bad ones?

Photo taken from http://microbeorganics.com/microbeidentifypart1.pdf

 

[mandalaman]

Will the aeration/oxygenation from brewing the tea get rid of the anaerobic badboys in your compost?

 

[Perception]

That's what I'm hoping. I'm not experienced enough yet to be able to identify the bad microbes under the microscope, but I'll know if they look different from previous teas. I'll start there, and if I see lots of new critters in there, I'll do some research.

 

[Perception]

Holy cow, this tea is going bonkers! I'm seeing so much bacteria and all kinds of different organisms. Lots of fungal hyphae too. Most of the hyphae is emerging from spores, and there are tons of un-sprouted spores floating around I believe.

So far, I think the technique for boosting the fungus totally worked. We'all see if I get lots of ugly Protozoa or anything.

I'm seeing so many things that I've never seen before. I used fish hydrolysate for the first time, so that's probably a big factor. The only thing that worries me so far is that there are some tiny little guys (same size as small bacteria) zipping around, and there are lots of them. Maybe baby protozoa? We'll see.

 

[Perception]

Wow, things went backwards after my last post. The post above was at 12 hours. When I viewed the AACT at 24 hours, the bacteria had reduced by half, and the Protozoa had increased by 10x.

12hrs
- Avg Bacteria per field: 2600
- Avg Protozoa per field: .2

24hrs
- Avg Bactetia per field: 1300
- Avg Protozoa per field: 2.6

I decided NOT to use the AACT on my cannabis plants. I ended it at 24 hours, watered a few philodendrons with it, and poured the rest in the garden. I have to say... the philodendrons are looking perky this morning!

It was a good learning experience though. I'm guessing that starting with the funky compost (pre-activated fungus) introduced a lot of Protozoa, which ate all my bacteria. That's the guess for now.

 

[Perception]

Oh, as a side not though - my fungal growth was looking great! Hyphae was continuing to expand in to clustered webs. I think hyphae would have done great out to 36 hours.

Next time, I'll only let my pre-activated compost (fungal) sit for 2 or 3 days (not 5), and use less water.

 

[Seamaiden]

Dang, great posting progression. Side-by-side with that versus Tim's worm casting tea should be helpful.

 

[Perception]

Dang, great posting progression. Side-by-side with that versus Tim's worm casting tea should be helpful.

Speaking of such things, has anyone checked out Tim's microbe identification DVD's for $28USD? http://www.microbeorganics.com/#My_DVD

I'd really like to find a resource (books/videos) on analyzing my microbes. What type I'm looking at, and how I should be expecting them to grow and multiply. Elaine Ingham's classes would be great, but I don't have $thousands to shell out on them. Maybe I'll just buy those DVD's. The description sounds perfect.

 

[Seamaiden]

Yes! He sent me a copy for free several years ago. He's a really good guy and he also works with the folks at KIS Organics.