Common questions
Frequently Wondered / Sometimes Asked.
A bunch of things people either ask or wonder about our shop or the products in general.
Sorry about this folks! In 2019, PayPal suddenly had a disliking to our harmless (and completely legal) microscopy spore products that they shut down their payment service with us (after around 10K orders from our eBay shop in 2017, to our .com in 2018-2019 with only 2 - both unjustified - chargebacks attempted in all of that time)... We believe this was due to three USA States in which those spores were illegal, confusing their laws with our UK law!
Interestingly enough, some or all of those same states in recent years changed their laws to make "magic mushrooms" completely legal, not just the harmless microscopy spores, but their actual cultivation, sale and consumption!
Although PayPal now lets shops sell these products, we harbour a 6-year grudge with them for the treatment of our shop in 2019, after they illegally withheld our customers' payments for 180 days - forcing us to send hundreds of active orders out without payment confirmation as we couldn't see who had or hadn't paid for the order - causing us reputational damage, and to make matters worse they couldn't point us to ANY term of service we had supposedly broken. We wrote all about this fiasco in our News section back in 2019 if you care to take a look.
So, sorry customers, never again out of principle.
These internet giants rule the internet - whatever they say goes because they can. They don't give a toss about the wee people like us or you.
Our whole business is treated as high risk, and that keeps us and our competitors out of the normal ways of paying (except for the shops which cleverly sidestep the 'high risk' category by only selling kits and promoting a second connected shop for the other products with discount codes to use).
Thing is though - bank transfer is actually the superior payment choice, because the transaction is much more private and you never need to worry a hacker has fitted a digital skimmer at checkout to siphon card details.
...Which is exactly what happened to us during our time off from the business in January 2024 when we were shut and not checking our business account, after purchasing from a supplier called clearbags. Only noticing by pure luck once Β£10K had already left in small payments to insurance companies, Apple and Netflix subscriptions and even an HMP prison to pay for someone's phone calls! You couldn't write it. And those annoying text messages from the bank to confirm it was us making a payment, not a single time did we get one of those from hundreds of scam payments coming out - we asked the bank fraud team how they managed to get around them and they told us the scammers were clever at getting around anything.
Yes, we got all of our money back from the bank (thank you) but we spent months dealing with it, because dozens of subscriptions were still coming out of our bank. Then came the insurance companies wanting their money back that the banks had clawed back, threatening us with legal action. It was a nightmare we would never have experienced had we paid by bank transfer. Now for every supplier and new shop we purchase from, we ALWAYS ask to pay by bank transfer.
Bank transfer rules, but it also costs us a massive amount of lost business as companies try to convince people that bank transfer is unsafe when my above argument completely turns that on its head.
So we do it our own way now! Bank transfer, cash in post and crypto are all there at checkout, and every one of them comes with its own instructions by email.
Sometimes shops love their own farts branding so much they want everyone to smell see it (including your postie and your neighbour when it gets handed to them when you're out!).
No, our parcels are boring and your neighbour doesn't need to know that you bought a "King Brown" (aka King Oyster) or a "Wood ear" (aka Auricularia auricula-judae).
We have seen and received some COOL parcels from mushroom shops.. but it's not ever going to happen here.
Spore-only orders go out same day if payment is received before 1pm Monday to Friday, or you get a free spore syringe if we're late. Grow kit orders are dispatched in 0-3 working days when payment is received before 1pm Monday to Friday, or you get a free grow kit if we're late. Other products show their dispatch promise on their own product pages.
CyLabs and live cultures need longer - CyLabs 10-12 working days, cultures 15-20.
For UK customers there are two flat rates at checkout. For just microscopy-only orders, Economy is Β£1.95 and takes around 2-3 days. Express is Β£3.95 and is 1 day, tracked. For everything else, the flat rate is Β£3.95 and Β£5.95 (as they are bigger parcels usually - we know some small things like IPA wipes will trigger the higher flat, we'll get around to figuring out that bug soon.)
We do mess up occasionally with dispatch, but us having some skin in the game for when we're late keeps us true and on our toes not to be late. Plus it just feels fair from our perspective. If we are late with your order, you do not need to get in touch to point it out - we are very aware of the orders we become late with so we know which ones to put the free gift inside. Peace.
Yes, we ship almost everywhere where it's legal for us to do so... you will see the available options at checkout.
Where we can, we calculate your own import fees at checkout and charge this to you so you don't have to deal with customs costs and extra delays - the parcels should just get to you without any fuss for a great experience (the price is higher initially, but you'd have to pay that price yourself anyway if you ordered from another shop which didn't charge you it at checkout and you'd have to go through the hassle of delays and paying it regardless).
If your country is not listed and is also not:
- on a UK sanctions list
- engaged in crimes against humanity
Then please get in touch and we will try to correct this.
If we have not dispatched your order yet, simple - get in touch and we will fix it for you.
If it has already dispatched, and it's not a UK address, this will likely be a lengthy wait to come back to us before we can re-send it as there are no in-flight options available!
But, if you are from the UK and it has already dispatched (as in, you've had a dispatch email from us or a note in your privacy guest account if you went that route at checkout):
AND
You choose Express which we send on Tracked 24.
OR
You choose Economy and we bump it up to Tracked 48 instead of using 2nd Class (you will know, because Royal Mail will send you a tracking link to your email unless you choose a Privacy Guest order, in which case we never take an email address so Royal Mail never gets one).
THEN
Yes, thank the mushroom Gods there should be a way or workaround, but only if your mistaken address still falls within the same general area (as in the Delivery Office's area coverage): you can change the in-flight option which Royal Mail link you to in the email they send you so you can:
- Deliver to a safeplace - probably unsuitable as it would be a safeplace next to the wrong address!
- Deliver to a neighbour (specified or one to avoid) - maybe ideal if it's just the wrong house number you used, like house 232 instead of 233!
- Redirect to a local Post Office - likely ideal
- Redirect to a Royal Mail Customer Service Point - likely ideal
- Redirect to a Royal Mail Parcel Locker - likely ideal, they hold it for 3 calendar days
- Reschedule for another day - not too useful for you
For a customer who goes through checkout as a Privacy Guest: we never take an email address, meaning Royal Mail doesn't get one either. So no tracking link will ever reach you. Get in touch through the messaging system in your Privacy Guest account.
Please Note: We don't tend to check messages after 2pm on our weekdays (Monday to Friday) as we are preparing orders for the daily Royal Mail collection. During especially busy times it can also take up to 2 weekdays to reply.
If none of this applies in some way, it's going to be a lengthy wait for it to come back to us before we can re-send it as Royal Mail will hold it for 18 calendar days before sending it back (which can take another few days on top of that).
Please try your hardest not to make mistakes with your delivery address to avoid stress and delays.
If it's a non-UK order, we're not sure what your courier will try - whether they put it in a safe place, with a neighbour, etc.
But for UK customers, Royal Mail usually leaves it in a safe place, with a neighbour, at the local Delivery Office (for you to collect or arrange a redelivery), or returns it to us eventually if it's not dealt with for 18 calendar days.
If your order went out on a tracked service (Express is Tracked 24, Economy is sometimes Tracked 48 if we bumped it to that), Royal Mail email you a tracking link which lets you change the in-flight options:
- Deliver to a safeplace
- Deliver to a neighbour (specified or one to avoid)
- Redirect to a local Post Office
- Redirect to a Royal Mail Customer Service Point
- Redirect to a Royal Mail Parcel Locker (held for only 3 calendar days)
- Reschedule for another day
For a customer who goes through checkout as a Privacy Guest: we never take an email address, meaning Royal Mail doesn't get one either. So no tracking link will ever reach you. Get in touch through the messaging system in your Privacy Guest account.
Please Note: We don't tend to check messages after 2pm on our weekdays (Monday to Friday) as we are preparing orders for the daily Royal Mail collection. During especially busy times it can also take up to 2 weekdays to reply.
If it does come all the way back to us, it's a lengthy wait before we can re-send it, and a very lengthy one if you are an International customer.
If there's an issue you can't resolve yourself, get in touch.
UK
If you're a UK customer and choose Economy, this is generally an untracked cheaper Royal Mail (RM) option like 2nd Class but sometimes we'll bump it up to Tracked 48 (T48).
Both 2nd Class and T48 have a '2-3 working days' aim to get to you (no, not a mistake - RM really do like keeping us on our toes with a service named Tracked 48 with a double speak delivery of 2-3 days).
If you choose Express at checkout, your parcel will be on an RM Tracked 24 with a '1 day delivery aim'.
If your parcel hasn't turned up by those delivery aims RM set, this is how they handle it:
RM consider Mon-Sat as their "working days", but confusingly, while RM do actually deliver on Sundays in some areas, they don't consider Sunday a working day in their calculations.
Economy
- T48 - they won't consider the parcel as lost until 7 working days have passed AFTER their 3 day delivery aim (counted Mon-Sat) - meaning 10 days since dispatch.
- 2nd Class - they won't consider the parcel as lost until 10 working days have passed AFTER their 3 day delivery aim (counted Mon-Sat) - meaning 13 days since dispatch.
Express
- T24 - they won't consider the parcel as lost until 7 working days have passed AFTER their 1 day delivery aim (counted Mon-Sat) - meaning 8 days since dispatch.
International
Sorry you are still waiting, here's the delivery aims for all International shipping options we have:
- Europe - International Standard / Tracked - 3-5 working days aim.
(20 working days AFTER their delivery aim, meaning 25 days) - Rest of the world
- International Tracked is 5-7 working days aim
(25 working days AFTER their delivery aim, meaning 30 days) - International Standard is 6-7 working days aim
(25 working days AFTER their delivery aim, meaning 30 days) - International Economy is 14-21 working days aim
(25 working days AFTER their delivery aim, meaning 30 days)
- International Tracked is 5-7 working days aim
All international items have 6 months from the date we dispatched, after that they will not entertain a claim at all.
If the parcel is blocked because of customs issues in your country, we cannot help with that - we apologise. That has only ever happened a few times in all of the years we've been running though.
If this rubbish situation ever happens to you, don't worry, let us know. We would never leave a customer out of pocket, we're not monsters. We'll figure out a replacement of course.
For UK customers: if you choose Express, we send it on Royal Mail Tracked 24. If you choose Economy, we send it on 2nd Class (sometimes Tracked 48).
Either way, if it's a Tracked 24 or Tracked 48, you'll know about it because Royal Mail sends the tracking link to your email.
Other than just tracking, the link lets you change the in-flight options, like:
- Deliver to a safeplace
- Deliver to a neighbour (specified or one to avoid)
- Redirect to a local Post Office
- Redirect to a Royal Mail Customer Service Point
- Redirect to a Royal Mail Parcel Locker (they hold it for 3 calendar days)
- Reschedule for another day
For International customers: Economy and Express are UK-only, so your options at checkout are Royal Mail International Standard, International Tracked or International Economy, depending on where you are. Only International Tracked carries the tracking of course. It doesn't let you do the in-flight options that UK users get from above. Also, you will be sent a tracking link by email if you pick the option.
For a customer who goes through checkout as a Privacy Guest: we never take an email address, meaning Royal Mail doesn't get one either. So no tracking link will ever reach you.
Get in touch through the messaging system in your Privacy Guest account and we will pass the tracking over to you (it's too much work to do by default for every Privacy Guest order right now until we build a way to automate the flow).
Please Note: We don't tend to check messages after 2pm on our weekdays (Monday to Friday) as we are preparing orders for the daily Royal Mail collection. During especially busy times it can also take up to 2 weekdays to reply.
If you should have had a tracking link and it hasn't arrived, get in touch and we will forward you the link.
Use them within two years and you can be confident they are still good. Plenty of people online report keeping them far longer and still having success!
Keep them somewhere cool and dark, and do not freeze them.
Use your grow kit as soon as you possibly can! Keep it away from heat while stored or the water inside the grain / substrate will release and dry it out, making it unusable.
No! Do not add any more solution than our guides tell you to.
Too much water raises your chances of contamination, and nobody wants that.
Technically, yes. BUT, with caveats.
We have a professional incubator which heats from below, but this has trays above it - the heating source is not directly touching the substrate and the entire enclosure is insulated meaning the temperature is consistent all around the grow kit.
If you are using a heat-mat, the heat will be concentrated at the bottom while all other sides will remain at a different temperature. You will also bake the water right out of the grain / substrate, making everything soaking and it will likely contaminate - even if it doesn't contaminate it will be completely useless because the substrate will have been completely ruined with the loss of water from within it.
If you are struggling with heat, please build or buy something like our CyLab, a 3 in 1 system with an incubator setup that works well enough for this hobby. Or if you have more money to spend, look for a professional incubator.
Hells naw! They are HEPA filters, designed to filter out tiny microbes that will be raining down on it from the air whilst the mycelium can breathe through it. Don't even touch them. In fact, don't even look at them! Leave them alone and you will be good π
Of course we do! Have a read of our Replacements, Refunds and Returns page for the detail, or our Terms and Conditions if you want the full version.
The easiest thing is to place a new order and cancel the current order, then choose the option you want at checkout, because every payment option comes with its own emailed instructions.
But if you want to pay us Bitcoin, we can generate you a wallet address to send to - we don't have that system fully set up at checkout yet but are planning to soon set up BTCPay Server!
Yes! In the UK it is legal to possess, buy and sell ANY mushroom spores, regardless of species or type. This is also true for virtually anywhere in the world (with the number of exclusions you can count on a single hand). We're a legitimate shop, running since 2017. In saying this, just because it's legal to sell any mushroom spores does not mean we will ever sell the spores from deadly species of mushroom like the Death Cap because although it would be fascinating through the microscope we'd not be able to sleep without worry that someone might be dumb enough to cultivate them.
If you are looking to cultivate mushrooms, we have over 23 species of culture available for growing Shiitake, Golden Oyster or even the bioluminescent (grow in the dark we like to call them) mushroom species "Panellus stipticus" and more!
Extremely Important: cultivating these species has been illegal in the UK since 2005. That is not what we sell them for, and if your question is about growing them then we will not answer it and will refuse sale.
Gourmet mushroom farms never cultivate from gourmet spores, because the traits would be all different from grow to grow. That's where cultures come in - mushroom farms will generally use actively growing live mushroom mycelium because the mycelium has been taken from a mushroom they want to replicate the same traits from... Think cloning. This is essential if they want those same exact characteristics each time like its looks, flavour etc.
Gourmet mushroom spores on the other hand are a lottery of genetics between spores. You won't know what you could be growing, you could strike it lucky and grow shiitake with characteristics superseding commercial shiitake mushrooms, or you could end up with the opposite - who knows what you would end up with.
Our mushroom spores are for the microscope however, 600X is the ideal viewing magnification - these are not for cultivation as the species would be toxic (although, we don't consider any of them remotely close to deadly as we would never stock anything that was deadly, ever). But many of the microscopy spores we have would be illegal to even attempt to cultivate - as stated on their respective product pages.
If you are looking to grow any kind of gourmet or medicinal mushroom, like Golden Oyster, Lion's Mane or more, then we offer those as liquid cultures to use with our grow kits. We don't offer spores for these. If you want spores for those then you will need to grow them first and collect the spores yourself.
Whilst we do give super simple grow guide instructions, we do not always have the time to answer cultivation questions beyond that because we are super busy. We recommend resources such as shroomery.org.
Another point: our grow guides will get you mushrooms, they are not going to turn you into an expert... That's not what we are here for and it's not our mission statement and never has been.
We provide the tools and the absolute basics, if the hobby tickles your fancy enough after trying our products then you'll probably want to go on a deep dive into the numerous amazing books out there to take your hobby and skill to the next level along with our products. The goal of our grow kits has always been to keep it easy and to get mushroom growing popular - we've been doing a good job sticking to this motto.
Whilst on this topic, it's best to mention a bit of a disclaimer as it has happened a few times since we started shop all those years ago:
If your question specifically relates to Psilocybin producing species then we will not answer your questions. Cultivating those types of species has of course been illegal in the UK since 2005 and we won't sell them to anyone who asks questions like that as it implies they are planning to use them not for microscopy but for cultivation. Don't force us to go full cookie monster with a silly question you know is illegal in nature.
You will be thinking of our Laminar Flowhood which you can see in our website pictures and on our YouTube channel!
So, ISO4 is a rating which means our flowhood delivers an ultra-clean, high-precision sterile workspace that is roughly 10 times cleaner than the typical industry standard (ISO5) used for standard lab work or mushroom cultivation. When competing shops say they have one, we say "Pics or it didn't happen".
This means it catches 99.999% of microscopic particles and interestingly it's not a HEPA filter - it's a ULPA filter.
MonoBox™ is a kit first launched in 2021, influenced by the popular Monotub grows happening in the USA cultivation from around 2008. It was innovative in that it broke all the rules and worked, such as microwaving the substrate instead of pasteurising it. Upping the spawn to substrate ratio to help first timers have very high first-time success rates. As well as being able to fruit the MonoBox cake on its side for a fruiting area far exceeding lying flat. An awesome grow kit people come back for time and time again.
The Cylocybe Special MycoBox Grow Kit is another massive fan favourite which has taught thousands of people how to grow. It is slightly more risky for contamination, in that you have to inject 5 separate sites - but as long as you are careful the success rate is through the roof.
Both the MonoBox and the MycoBox are solid grow kits - but we won't lie to you, MonoBox is the successor and it's hands down the best grow kit right now (until we launch some new ones shortly at least).
First of all, sorry for not having what you are looking for! We are always working to add to our collections and to have a continuous stock of your favourite products.. Best thing to do is drop us an email and let us know what you are looking for - We love recommendations for new products!
We are based in Scotland, UK. The land of GTA6 and hypodermic syringes. Rule-breaking and syringes at their finest!
But if you are in the UK, and you are worried that delivery takes longer from Scotland - it doesn't. If we send Express (Tracked 24) today, it will be delivered tomorrow.
We once had a customer in England worry that parcels from Scotland went through customs, which gave us a little chuckle - no, the parcel van drives to England or Wales or NI to your local hub, before the destination courier... Exactly the same process and delivery time as a parcel from Manchester to London would be.
As our friends in England know, the population is around 10 times greater than Scotland, meaning Scottish customers only account for a few percent of our orders. The bulk is England, Wales, NI, Ireland and International (in that order).
For our own company, we say it as SY-lo-SYB.
For Psilocybe, there are so many different ways people pronounce it. Paul Stamets wrote about the pronunciation question and declined to pick a winner, so we are in good company:
- The mycological standard: sill-uh-SIGH-bee. The "ps" is said as an "s", and the final "e" is not silent.
- Alexander Smith: psi-lah-cee-bee
- Rolf Singer: psi-lo-cee-bee
- Us: sill-o-syb (old habits die hard)
Smith and Singer both published on Psilocybe and named new species, sometimes together, and they still never agreed on how to say it. Ours is the easiest off the tongue.
Generally we don't check messages after 2pm on our weekdays (Monday to Friday) as we are preparing orders for the daily Royal Mail collection. But depending on how busy we are, it can take up to 2 weekdays to reply to messages although the majority of the time we will respond same day.
We don't read messages on a Saturday. It's an early short shift.
From our end, yes - our email system is hosted with ProtonMail.com who take privacy extremely seriously - as do we!
From your end, this will depend on your own email provider.. if you also happen to use ProtonMail (we recommend them to everyone!) all emails will be end-to-end encrypted.
Still stuck? Get in touch.