Growing more inocucor

[cnycharles]

Hello all, not exactly an orchid culture question but a beneficial bacteria culture question . I have a little bit of inocucor left, it doesn’t smell bad, smells normal. I read somewhere a little while ago where someone was explaining how to ‘grow’ more of your beneficials with a certain recipe. Has anyone tried this and know if it would work with inocucor?
Inocucor is no longer produced. I have purchased the new product offered by ray, but this seemed like an interesting idea. There is a bewildering array of available beneficials on the market, and difficult to know what will work. Inocucor seemed to work well with orchids, so seems worth trying an experiment. Has anyone tried making or extending their beneficial supply?
Thanks
Charles

 

[Ray]

Here’s how I have done it using Inocucor’s product.

 

[NYEric]

Beer did you say!?

 

[PaphMadMan]

Ray's grow-your-own method should give you a useful result, but it might not be very similar to Inocucor. Most often, mixed cultures of microorganisms will not maintain the same ratios or full range of species. Commercial products would usually go back to combining pure cultures in a specific ratio for each production cycle, with maybe one round of fermentation of the mixed culture. There are some exceptions of course, like sour dough starter and kefir grains, but these are cases of a stable mix of species developing over time rather than maintaining everything that went in at the beginning.

Some of the microorganisms won't survive in the original product as long as others, so the age of your starter culture matters. They won't all reproduce as successfully or as fast in the culture conditions you provide. Other organisms or strains will get introduced along the way. And some may actively inhibit others. You'll probably end up with a heavily B. subtilis culture because it forms spores that will virtually never die and it will inhibit many other organisms. That's not necessarily a bad thing because B. subtilis is probably most important to begin with.

 

[Ray]

One of the things both Inocucor and Quantum have done is come up with consortia that are quite stable together. Does it hold true in subsequent fermentation? Probably not, but it will be a “drifting” change, not a step.