New to slime moulds -- How many times can I grow a dish out and inoculate other dish with part of the original mould? Endlessly?

[superuser]

Can I keep my one physarum polycephalum endlessly if I were to grow him to his dish fully, and inoculate another dish with a part of his self and tons of oats and then repeat that process?

Another question: do they just like water agar and oats or would they like potato dextrose agar and oats more?

Last one:  Could I fill a jar of oats, sterilize it, then put a mouldy guy in it?  What would happen

Thanks!

[ian]

Hi 

Yeah - in principle you should be able to keep one going indefinitely. The Dusstour lab do theirs by half filling a petri dish with a semicircle of oats, adding slime to that then filling the other side and scooping out the old. 

In practise they do tend to go down with something stinky in the end - you could sterilise all your food but oats are rich and contaminant prone.

As for agar - I'd keep them on paper if I were you for day to day growing - it's cheaper. The reason to use water agar is slimes don't form patterns without a gradient to follow ( usually a food gradient ), if you grow them on nute agar they just spread out into a uniform yellow sheet and sit there. Btw if you want a really strong attractant, 10% powdered egg gets them moving.

Filling a jar - they'd grow, I wonder how far down though as they're aerobic. It's worth a try, you'd need to sterilise the oats then hydrate with sterile water or you'd just end up with a solid block of porridge. 

[superuser]

Nice thanks for the answers!  It makes sense that they'd just make a large circle if everything around them is just food!  By 10% powdered egg, what's the other 90%?  Or is 10% like just how you buy it I've never heard of the stuff.

For the jar -- I was thinking of pressure cooking to sterilize the oats, but also having holes on the lid with micropore tape to let it breathe!  (something very common in mycology)

Now to just get my hands on one of them :^)

[ian]

The egg is made up in agar in the literature, I've also mixed it in with oats. 

I can send you slime....

[superuser]

You'd send me some?  That'd be so greatly appreciated.  I'm in the US if that matters for if you can or not.  I will DM you with some of my info and I'll pay whatever the price and shipping you say is

[AndyGadget]

I've just recently found that my Physarum polycephalum prefers muesli oats to the porridge oats I was feeding it.  It would also enclose a piece of crystallised ginger (also from the muesli) but suprisingly, not interested in a bit of raisin. 

[Katharine]

Wow!