black stuff (mold?) growing on my mushrooms

[kylehasgeniusbits]

This black stuff seems to be plaguing my mushrooms. I'm trying to upload a picture but the site won't let me post URLs until I have posted 15 posts on the forum. It's just blackness of the shrooms. The cakes look pretty contaminant free (in my slightly trained eyes) and they grow very well, but it seems as the mushrooms reach maturity they sometimes get these black spots. So my questions would be A) what is it? B) is it bad? C) where is it coming from, the cakes or is it post-birthing contamination

[NHMI]

dont worry about it, they are spores from the mushrooms dropping but somehow the airflow gets em all over the caps

[NHMI]

After the veil tears they are ready to pick...if you leave em for about 12-24 hrs afterwards they drop their spores to continue their lifecycle but they get all over everything ...even on top of caps with no shroom above it...but don't worry, they are still good, just pick em and dry em...

[kylehasgeniusbits]

I was hoping that was what is was, just worried. So it's kind of like the mushrooms are making a spore print on top of themselves?

I'll have to get better at determining exactly when the veil is splitting.

Thanks!

[AnotherDimension]

you can tell just by looking under it, when the veil splits you can see the gills, that is when they are ready to harvest

[kylehasgeniusbits]

It seems like sometimes I can see the gills when the mushroom is still very small. How big are they supposed to get before the veil splits? Anything from 4 inches down to 2 or less seems to be about what I'm getting. Mostly around the 2 inch range it looks like the gills start to make an appearance. Hence my terrarium is black with spores because I leave all these spore depositing mushrooms in there for a while because I want them to be a little bigger. I don't want need them to be huge, but when they're dried if you pick a little guy it's hardly worth looking at, it looks like nothing.

[NHMI]

ya, sounds like either too cold or bad genetics....make sure you fan em enough too cuz too much CO2 can cause em to be small...just try again, maybe your next flush will be bigger

[kylehasgeniusbits]

I have them in a plastic tote with holes drilled in it. Would it be better to leave the top off or is that too much? There's a decent amount of holes, but not as many as the demonstration I saw.

[NHMI]

I sometimes leave it open a lil but you want to keep the humidity high so maybe drill some more holes or leave the top open a crack, but dont take the top off or you will get small shrooms that are very dry...and shriveled