Food

[mint taste slime mould]

I'm doing some projects with physarum polycephalum but I confronted on some problems.

I bought oat flour(not a flake).

To feed them, I made oat porridge(25g oat/ 50ml water, sticky).

It's totally okay until second day of the experiement. But about on the third day, unknown white filamentous fungi grows on the oat porridge.

Maybe I think the reason is 'humid state of oat'.

But I want to do my experiment with oat flour(beacuse there are so much oat flour)

Can you help me how to solve this problem in this situation?

[Jan-Maarten Luursema]

Hi Mint, what you could try is microwaving your mix of water and oat flour. You will need about five times more water by weight water when you do this, and it would sterilize your mix nicely. Ultimately, you always will have some contamination by 'true' molds, often by the fifth day or so. The more sterile you work, the longer it will take for uninvited guests to arrive. Good luck!