The Slime Mould Collective

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Hello!

I've been working with slime molds for a while and they always send out their foraging body in one direction, then another. However, I have seen pictures where they start in one place and spread out in a uniform circle. How is this done?

Thanks!

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Here is an example

Time, size and luck basically - that's a large starting piece in the middle so it's got the luxury of having enough biomass to explore in multiple directions. If it doesn't find food quickly it's more likely to start off another branch and sometimes they just don't do it

So creating a "block" of slime-covered oats would allow it to explore multiple branches at a time?

Yeh I typically use a teaspoon to tablespoon sized blob to start things off - particularly on maps

I see. I have been using one slime oat at a time which might explain the problem. So to get that many slimy, you must feed your slime molds a lot right? Do you know approx (like 10,50,100) how many oats fit into one tablespoon/teaspoon?

Thanks!

Usually when you feed something a lot it will grow, yes. I think the measurement was more of an approximation and if you're really curious about how many oats are in a tea/tablespoon why not grab one and keep with the heart of scientific exploration and experiment yourself, not just ask to get......spoon fed information, ba dum tsss. Sorry, I had to.

20/10 though I will have to used slime oats since those do have a different volume compared to dried oats. The information would make it easier bc I'm trying to figure out how much I need to feed per teaspoon bc I need to wait for it to grow.

I didn't get an answer yesterday so I ended up just dumping in a bunch of oats so that slime could cover it and it would be ready for measurement so yeah, that's what I ended up doing.

You're not feeding your slime enough; start with about ten oats, feed as soon as it's covered most of its existing food. Double the feed every time. On day five I'm using 50-100g of oats - twice a day per dish, ok so I'm making a huge amount of slime but these things eat a lot. You need to add food onto fresh clean areas of the substrate I do this by starting in the middle of a petri and feeding oats in a ring around the starting point. I've seen labs just use just a petri dish full - really full of oats sprayed with water and scrape out half every few days to top up

Thanks! Once the inner rings have been consumed, I've been going back and filling those spaces in (repeating the cycle). It appears I have been SIGNIFICANTLY underfeeding my slime molds.

This one was scelrotium on 30th November, pic taken this morning - they grow fast if you let them 

If you're gonna do that, make sure you scrape out the remains of the old food before adding more or it'll start to rot. They'll go about a week like that before they need fresh bedding - I fold the culture in half and put it on the edge of fresh wet paper with plenty of food. If your slime starts to smell of yeast, vinegar or develops black spots do a change asap - physarum can outrun contaminants

Will do, I have been using clumps of ~15 slimy oats to start experiments...works pretty well.

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