Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My work area is very simple at the moment.

After I had the contamination, I disposed of everything that had contacted the mushrooms

and washed the room with bleach.

At the moment I have the two fruiting chambers and a lot of grain spawn and liquid culture

developing.

All my sterile work is done in the glove box in another room.

My intention is to have a production of about 50kg per year hence I think the whole wall will

be full of fruiting chambers.

cheers Lou

Very Nice setup. If only I had the space... and time to fully take on yet another interest. I am shooting for the same benchmark though; between the 10m square wine cap bed and log culture of Sulfur shelf (Chicken of the woods). We will see. I like this thread a lot

cool, thanks for the pic. Where do you get your spawn from ?

Make it myself.


Process

Spore or clone is grown on agar.

Mycelium from agar is transferred to liquid culture

Liquid culture is transferred to the grain culture.


Each step is simple but there is a lot of waiting in between.

marvellous idea!

wow! great to see you guys growing, and awesome that this thread is still alive. I haven't been getting notifications, so sorry for my absence.

I've got a few big batches of Garden Giants (king stropharia) going, and I have some pink oyster grain spawn started for spring.

Lukeboshier over at Aquaponics nation has been using mushrooms on straw as the biofilter for his aquaponics setup, which is really awesome. Here's a link to his latest post about it:
http://aquaponicsnation.com/forums/topi ... entry60406


So, there are some possibilities for mycofiltration in aquaponics setups. You may find that mycelium is vastly superior than bacteria and plants, as some research suggests (Stamets).

We made a greaywater filter with earthworms and woodchips (http://velacreations.com/blog/404-grey- ... ilter.html), but I may add a level of mycofiltration to see what happens. It might be better as a polishing filter after the earthworms, and Garden Giants would be a good species for this (they like compost and soil and decomposing things, rather than fresh straw).

Anyway, keep up the great work, people! Mushrooms are a wonderful hobby and a perfect addition to aquaponics.

Neat stuff Vela. Glad to see you're still around. I checked out the mushroom filter and like the idea, pity there aren't more pictures though.

Cheers

Yeah, sorry I haven't been around a lot lately, it's been busy around developing new food systems and livestock integrations and all sorts of fun!

There are a few pictures on the previous page, but I'll help Lukeboshier get more posted. Feel free to jump in and ask any questions, I found the whole concept extremely interesting. I'm hoping we can learn of new ways to get mushrooms integrated in our backyard systems, because they have a lot of features (filtration and direct absorption of nutrients) that we could benefit from.

Yeah, I'd really like to see his setup. I can think of a few questions right now but they probably would have more to do with feasibility so I think I'll hold off until I see more.

here's a relatively similar concept I found today: http://www.fungi.com/blog/items/the-pet ... oblem.html

Mycelium floats, which is convenient for an aquaponics system.

Hi Vela,

I tried yesterday and again today but the connection on the link always times out so I haven't been able to check out the link yet but I'll keep trying. Thanks.

What is everyone using for nasties (gnats, flys, etc.) control? My blue oyster spawn got taken over by fungus gnats and I also found some fruit flys in the vinegar/soap trap. I'm tossing those in the worm and compost bins so that my King Oyster baskets don't get contaminated with them. I guess I need to seal my grow tent a bit better and add a small mesh screen over the air intake on the fresh air fan.

Ronmaggi - Might as well try soaking it overnight to ensure it's completely soaked. No chlorinated tap water though. Gotta use some of the recent rain water you've been receiving down there finally. Mycelium is pretty resilient stuff.

As for the "where did you acquire your spawn" question, I bought my initial Oyster spawn from an online vendor (I won't mention who they are) and wasn't too impressed with the quality. The King Oyster though is from Aloha Medicinals, http://www.alohaculturebank.com/, and that stuff was solid. Highly recommend them for those in the US.

Which link? If the last one I poste,d search google for "Mycoboom" and you'll find other sites and information about it.

It's basically a long tube of burlap with straw and mycelium on the inside which floats on the suurface of the water and filters the water.

That's a cool idea. Hmm, Mycoboom in the sump maybe? Might be a bit too damp but could be worth a try. Still can't get to anything on the Fungi.com site but I found plenty elsewhere. Thanks.

Yeah in the sump or just floating in the FT. Mycobooms could only get what was on the surface, but if you figured out a way to trickle from the bottom of the FT to the top of the mycoboom, it might be able to filter a lot more.

Lukeboshier posted some photos, it looks like he's just using boxes of mycelium as a trickle filter, kinda like a media grow bed, super simple.

I've got a 7,000 gallon rain catchment tank, and I'd be curious if a trickle filter of say 200 gallons or so with mycelium could keep it clean.

I also wonder if a mycofilter could clean water for human or animal consumption. I have to find the link (it may be on fungi.com), but there was a study to show that mycelium filtered water that was high in ecoli and fecal cloriforms and reduced the content by over 1000x, which is pretty impressive. I know that the secretions from mycelium used for digestion are naturally anti bacterial and anti-viral, but I don't know how well that would work in a filtration setup.

Still, it's all very interesting. Lukeboshier has replaced growbeds with mycelium beds, and as far as I know, he's the first to do that in an Aquaponics setup.