First time sowing orchid seeds, may have gone a little overboard!

[Paraphalaenopsis]

Just sowed 42 petri dishes with 7 species of orchid seed!

Media is from the Orchid Seed Bank, it's the P669 formula.
I have more types of seeds in the mail, will be sowing those soon too!

I can't seem to post pictures yet so here is a Flickr link:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/135254...posted-public/

They're incubating 5 feet below a 600w MH bulb at half power.
I had a thermometer under a glass jar for a while and the temp only gets to ~75F at most, ~71F at the least.

Species currently sown are:
Den. williamsonii
Den. oligophyllum
Den. ellipsophyllum
Den. falconeri
Den. harveyanum
Vanda bensonii
Ascocentrum rubescens

Feel free to ask questions and provide advice/criticism!
I'll update as more species get here!

[PaphMadMan]

Ambitious. If you don't have much contamination you're going to have a lot of work replating later, and end up needing a lot of space. Make sure you've taken both into account. Parameters for successful sowing and germination are pretty broad for most species. So far so good.

Are you confident of your seed source? What others are you planning? If you end up with more Ascocentrum rubescens than you can handle I'd take some off your hands...

[Paraphalaenopsis]

My seed source is the Ebay user kumpol_p. As far as I know they're the only seller of legitimate orchid seeds on Ebay.
If you check my gallery I have a micrograph of a Den. williamsonii seed which came from one of the seed packs.

The seeds look viable but only time will tell!
Honestly the only seeds that didn't look that great under the microscope were the rubescens, the seeds coats are super dark so it's hard to see if there are even embryos.

I may try some seeds from the Orchid Seed Bank eventually too, depends on if I see any germination from these.

As for other seeds I'm waiting on getting here:
Vanda lilacina
Den. chittimae
Den. albosanguineum
Den. signatum
Ascocentrum ampullaceum

I'm going to replate to quart jars with filter lids when the plantlets or protocorms outgrow the petri dishes.

After that I'm planning to build a large propagator when it's time to deflask.
Hopefully I'll be able to care for these for until they're acclimated to non-flask living.
At which point I'll likely sell and gift the majority of them...

[Paraphalaenopsis]

Going to try some tissue culture of a Ctsm. boyi backbulb.
I'm going to divide it in to it's individual nodes (meristems) and plate them on the same media as the seeds I sowed. (according to Phytotech, P668 was developed for Phalaenopsis stem propagation, I'm using P669 media which is very similar)
I'm going to use jars instead of petris for the tissue culture.

First though I'll surface sterilize the backbulb with 10 percent bleach in my vacuum chamber with constant agitation from a magnetic stirrer, followed by a sterile water wash.

Catasetums seem pretty inclined to produce new pseudobulbs when removed from the parent plant, so I'm not using any growth hormones.
I do have some 6-BAP paste I can sterilize and use if I don't get any growth from just cutting it up and plating it.

[Paraphalaenopsis]

Well the tissue culture attempt went south really fast.
Every last jar and plate of Ctsm. boyi and fimbriatum went moldy.

The seed petris are still fine though, no contamination yet.

[No-Pro-mwa]

Lots of work you are doing. Good luck, sorry about the tissue culture going south.

[Paraphalaenopsis]

Unfortunately I think I'm going to have to start over.
I don't think the bleach was neutralized by the agar as I read it would be.
The seeds have taken on a white appearance and look heavily damaged under the microscope.
In my opinion, it's very unlikely at this point that I will see germination

I have more agar and petri dishes in the mail to me, hopefully I can make this work the second time around.
I will wash the seeds in sterile water after the bleach soak this time.

[estación seca]

It's probably almost impossible to harvest meristematic tissue without a dissecting microscope and really good sterile technique, including holding one's breath for the entire process, or using a hood. Really good sterile technique means practice, practice, practice.

It is impossible to kill all the organisms on a piece of a plant that has grown in the open. The only hope is to sanitize the area near the meristem as well as possible, and use multiple sterile tools to remove tissue one cut at a time, then using a new tool for the next cut.

As for the seeds... Use the search function to look up the bleach method described here on Orchid Board by members roby and giuseppeorchids.

[Paraphalaenopsis]

I don't think it's my sterile technique as I've cloned wild mushrooms and gotten clean cultures on the first transfer, the difference with mushrooms is you can rip them open and get relatively clean tissue.

As for switching tools, I generally just flame sterilize my scalpel every few cuts in addition to changing the blade often. (Use to use a bacinerator, but I didn't like it so now I use a wickless alcohol lamp.)
Should I be switching tools entirely?

Eventually I plan to get a dissecting microscope and a flow hood, I'll give mericloning a go again once I have those. (Starting a mushroom farm so a flowhood is basically mandatory.)

I think the issue with the clones was the large pieces of tissue I used to ensure there was meristematic tissue present. That combined with the backbulbs being old growth that was probably way dirtier than new growth would be, a recipe for disaster.
A dissecting microscope would definitely make the difference in that regard.

I'll look in to that bleach method, pretty disappointing to see all the current flasks dead.
I do still have some seeds left over, so I can remake all the flasks again soon!

Thanks for your input and help.