Tips?? Caring for flasks until deflasking!

[emmajs243]

OH geez Philip!!!i hope not for the ones I did....ugh! Terrible thought.....

Well I deflasked the last flask about 4 a.m. This
Morning before work and didn't trim anything on them at least. I figured that was going to be your advise still! 😅 It just didn't look right to me and I know it happened from yesterday morning to evening so I didn't want to see how far it continued after another day at work!

My one regret with the first two is that I didn't get to them faster....well and now that I trimmed back some dead leaves....but, I didn't want to put these guys off as a result so got them out ASAP this morning!

For the other kiddos that were already deflasked I left their lid a tad cracked last night to bring down humidity a bit and help with airflow. Even still, humidity was plenty high so I slightly closed it but left it cracked for the rest of the day while I'm at work and will get some larger containers to space them out better on today!

This newest flask did NOT want to do very much separating however so I left them be. Pretty fun getting to break their bottle open! It went MUCH smoother then expected!

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Breaking the bottle is not necessary unless it has a narrow neck. If the bottle has a wide opening it is easier to open the lid and use a chopstick, straw, or skewer to slosh the agar loose and dump the contents out into a basket or your container of choice. Anything that is stubborn can be rinsed out of the bottle with RO/DI water.

If you've cut some of them, don't worry about it. If you get lucky, they might survive. In my experience though, they tend to die if they're intentionally cut. Their immune systems are not developed enough to cope with the many pathogens present in the open environment. Inside the flask it is sterile. Practically no bacteria or fungus/mold exists in it or the flask is considered contaminated and must be discarded.

Just sit back and observe. I recommend taking notes too if that's your thing.

[emmajs243]

Thanks Philip! The first two flasks were mason jarsso I did exactly as described. I got a pair of 12" tweezers to use then swished the particularly stubborn stuff with RO water. This last flask however was indeed a narrow top...of the agar on this flask was less thick like the other two I still probably could have done it with the tweezers but they were very well cemented in the agar and to each other in a big clump and I foresaw much root damage if I tried taking them out that way. So breaking the bottle was really the only option left.

Alright! Thank you guys so much!! Now just for sitting back....I think this may be the hardest part of deflasking!

Oh! And Philip! GREAT call on taking notes! Thank you for that reminder! It was my plan but I've been so caught up with them I have completely spaced it!