Advice rearing from spore

[Arman]

Hi all,

It’s been a while since I’ve raised some slime mold, but I’ve gotten back into it recently. I’m in NYC, and collected some wood a few weeks back to rear some beetles. After some time, I noticed a plasmodium popped up, so I transferred it on its wood into a dish with wet paper towel. Unfortunately, I’ve since run into issues. The first few days went fine, but I noticed that it really didn’t want to come off of the piece of wood to search for oats, just spread around the wood. Before long, it started to clump up and I believe has now formed sporangia at an extremely small size. What’s the best protocol moving forward to try and raise a new batch? Should I wait a few days to make sure the sporangia are fully formed first? I can then dry them out and suspend some spores in solution with a bit of oat, but I don’t have agar available to then seed colonies, so maybe I could just pour it onto paper towel? There’s some photos below; if anyone is able to identify from what little is visible that’d be appreciated.

On a side note: has there been any discussion of forming a Discord or similar for this community? I saw there’s a Facebook group but a server may be convenient for shorter or more informal communication.

Thanks,

Arman

[ian]

Hi 

Getting slime from spores isn't hard (for some species) but it's slow. First of all they have a dormancy period to serve - I think it's three weeks min for physarum, I give wild things a couple of months.

Some species require factors from the environment so you could boil up substrate for your hydration water - I use about a gram of alder bark in 100ml for enteridium.

Mix the spores and hydration mix, supply food by adding a pinch of oat powder - which will rot and provide bugs. You can check for hatching under a microscope. Pour the mix onto plain water agar after a few days with another pinch of oats and leave warm and dark for - weeks at least. Try cold shocking, heat shocking...

I should look up discord - I'm not very online..