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Cylocybe

MONOBOX GROW KIT
INSTRUCTIONS

v2.217th July, 2026

WHAT'S NEW IN v2.0

  • Larger, single SpawnTub container holding 1 litre of sterile grain.
  • Enhanced substrate recipe.
  • 2L of perlite for greater humidity.
  • Custom Cylo Grow Tent.

GOT AN OLDER KIT?

If your kit is slightly different from the latest version, the following guide pretty much identically applies still - we used to give two smaller SpawnTubs with less grain in each, now we provide a single larger SpawnTub with more grain. There are some other differences, but no changes are drastic enough to make following this guide any more difficult.

INOCULATION

We highly recommend working within a SAB (Still-Air Box), but at the very least, work in a small, very clean and draught-free room. Make sure you’re freshly showered and in clean clothes, then thoroughly clean your hands and forearms with a blue Clinell wipe and fit your face mask.

Prepare your chosen gourmet mushroom spore or culture syringe by screwing on a new sterile needle.

Carefully take your SpawnTub out of its packaging. It’s now exposed to the open air and potential contaminants - this is where working within a SAB will greatly reduce your chances of suffering a contamination.

Use a green Clinell chlorhexidine wipe to clean the grey rubber injection port on the lid of the SpawnTub, then pierce through it to inject 3ml of solution into the grain.
Never inject through the pink filters!

When you pierce the needle through, we recommend aiming it towards the edge and moving it slowly around the full circumference of the SpawnTub as you push down on the syringe plunger to add the 3ml of solution.

Distributing it evenly like this will speed up the colonisation time. It also makes the mycelium growth easier to see, as it starts on the visible edge of the SpawnTub rather than hiding in the centre of the grain where you can’t.

COLONISATION OF THE GRAIN

Now keep your SpawnTub somewhere clean and safe. Mycelium is living and needs to breathe, so don’t ever store it in an airtight container - the filter strip in the lid provides the clean air exchange it needs.

Temperature is extremely important for good colonisation. Too hot (above 26°C) or too cold (below 18°C) will very likely cause problems like contamination, or slow to no growth.

Aim for 24°C if you can, and try to hold steady whatever temperature you’re able to achieve - don’t let it swing up and down too much.

Avoid heat mats, please! It’s a very common mistake. They don’t spread the warmth evenly, which can cause excessive condensation and water build-up - an easy pathway for contamination to enter your SpawnTub.

Consider building or buying an incubator if you’re struggling to hold these temperatures - it’s way cheaper than running your home heating constantly, and gives much better results.

At 24°C, it will generally take around 2-3 weeks for your SpawnTub to fully colonise - meaning the grains are completely covered in healthy, white mushroom mycelium. That said, it depends on a lot of factors, and nature can simply be unpredictable!

Even once it looks fully covered in mycelium, it’s best practice to give the grain an extra few days, to make sure the inside is fully colonised too before you move on.

PREPARING THE MONOBOX™

When you're confident you have full colonisation of the grain inside your SpawnTub, you can begin this step.

It’s crucial that you don’t open your SpawnTub before full colonisation, as you’ll expose uncolonised grains to the open air and hugely risk contamination.

Tip the entire contents of the Substrate Mix bag into a large pot, then add 1100ml of boiling water. Pop the lid on and heat it on high for 10 minutes - this helps kill off as many nasties as possible, giving your mycelium the cleanest possible head start.

Once the 10 minutes are up, take the pot off the heat and leave it to cool with the lid still on, all the way down to room temperature. Don’t rush this! If you mix the substrate with your colonised grain while it’s still warm, you risk damaging the mycelium - remember, it’s living. It’s ready when the pot feels cool to the touch, not just lukewarm.

Once it’s cooled, give your MonoBox™ tub and lid a good clean with hot soapy water, making sure to rinse all the soap off. Now you’re ready for Step 4, where you’ll mix everything together.

SPAWNING TO SUBSTRATE

When your substrate has cooled and is ready, first clean your hands and forearms - use a blue Clinell wipe again, or wash thoroughly with soap and water. Then take a good handful of the substrate straight from the pot and set it aside for later.

Remove any micropore tape from around the edge of your SpawnTub, then open the lid and tip the colonised grain straight into the pot, on top of the substrate. It’ll come out as a solid block that you’ll need to break up - it can take a bit of force to get going, so be firm, but careful not to squish any grains.

Take your time breaking the spawn up into individual kernels and mixing them evenly through the substrate. Each kernel is an inoculation point, so the better you spread them, the faster and stronger your colonisation will be!

Once it’s all well mixed, transfer everything into your cleaned MonoBox tub.

Turn over for next steps

Finally, take that handful of substrate you set aside earlier and spread it evenly over the top until you can’t see any exposed grain. This is called a casing layer.

Secure the lid on the MonoBox and store it somewhere warm. 24-26°C is ideal, and getting the temperature right here is absolutely crucial for success - you need colonisation to be quick, or there’s a high risk of contamination taking hold. This is the make-or-break stage of your grow.

From around day 5, you can crack one corner of the lid open. Once there’s a good amount of mycelium growing, it often wants more fresh air than the filters alone can provide, and giving it that extra air exchange can actually help speed colonisation up.

In the right conditions, full colonisation takes around 7-14 days. As before, once it looks fully colonised, give it a few more days to be sure the centre - where you can’t see - has colonised too.

When you’re confident the substrate is fully colonised with strong, healthy mushroom mycelium, you’re ready to begin fruiting. Don’t fully open the MonoBox before then. You now have a colonised block, known as a 'cake'.

PREPARING YOUR CYLO GROW TENT

Push in the bottom corners of the tent and fold in on itself up to the arrow line on the sticker. Put your arm inside the tent and push out the sides.

This creates a gusset in the tent, which allows a flat space in the bottom for sitting your perlite and cake on.

Now you need to hydrate your perlite. Slowly pour it into a strainer (it throws off a lot of dust) and rinse under a tap until it’s soaking wet. Shake off some of the excess water and then pour it all into the grow tent. Spread it out into an even layer.

Please cover your mouth and nose when working with perlite and avoid breathing the dust in. If you do breathe some in, move into fresh air and rinse your nose/mouth.

Cut a piece of tin foil slightly larger than your cake and place this on top of the perlite. You don't ever want your cake sitting on the damp perlite, as it can cause contamination.

Remove your cake from the MonoBox™ and place it on the foil. Fold over the top of the tent and secure with clips or tape, so that humidity can build up inside.

Turn over for fruiting steps

THE BEST BIT... FRUITING YOUR MUSHROOMS!

Maintaining a temperature of around 20-22°C for this stage is crucial for best results.

Humidity and FAE (fresh air exchange) are extremely important for pinning and healthy mushroom development, as is temperature and light. They all need to work in harmony.

Humidity will build up inside the grow tent from the damp perlite and your tent has custom airflow holes to allow for fresh air exchange.

The only time you’ll open your tent is when you’re ready to harvest your mushrooms - peeking even for a few seconds is enough to lose humidity and cause growth defects (aborted pins, caps breaking, etc).

Placing an electric fan somewhere in the room on a low setting will create a gentle air current and help increase the FAE inside the grow tent.

Your mushrooms will need light to grow. Indirect sunlight is fine, but if you want to use grow lights - a 6-7000K LED or flourescent light a couple of feet away is recommended.

If you notice the inside of your grow tent looking dry, there are a few things which can cause this. Your perlite is not damp enough, the fan is too close, or grow lights are too close and hot.

Observe what’s happening and adjust your setup as required - fantastic results depend on it.

After around 3-7 days you’ll begin to see lots of tiny white dots - these are hyphal knots which will develop into primordia, aka mushroom pins... the exciting part!

At this point, remove the round stickers at the top of your tent to allow more air exchange through these custom airflow holes.

It should then only take 4-5 days for the pins to grow into fully mature mushrooms ready for harvest.

During this time, they’ll let you know if something isn’t quite right - fuzzy mycelium at the base of the mushrooms and/or thin stems are an indication that more FAE is needed so increasing the fan speed might be something to try.

Don’t worry about any mushrooms growing around the sides and bottom of the cake, you’ll still be able to harvest them. If you want to give your mushrooms more room to grow next time (although the Cylo Grow Tent should provide plenty of space!), use a fruiting chamber instead of a grow tent. Check out the photos on our CyLab product page for results when growing inside our CyLab fruiting chamber.

When the veil beneath one of your mushroom caps is about to tear off, this is when you should harvest your first flush. If you don’t get there quick enough, spores will begin to drop from your mushroom caps and make a mess! It’s best to cut the mushrooms off with a clean scalpel or knife, you can also just pull them off but be careful not to damage the substrate too much.

After you’ve harvested all the mushrooms from your first flush, you can use a method called ‘dunking’ to get more moisture into your substrate. Simply fill a container with water deep enough to submerge your cake in and then place it in the water. It will float to the top so you need to use something to weigh it down, as you need it to be fully submerged in water at all times.

Place a lid on the container or cover it to keep everything clean. Leave your cake submerged for anything between 6-24 hours.. depending on how much patience you have! But obviously, the longer you leave it, the better your results will be.

It's best to rehydrate your perlite at this point too. Just repeat the previous steps. Always be careful not to have any water pooling in the bottom of your tent though, as it's a contamination risk. You can also replace the tin foil.

When you remove the cake from the water, give it a rinse under the tap and allow excess water to drain away before placing back into your grow tent.

You should continue to dunk your substrate after each flush and rehydrate the perlite at the same time.

If you’ve taken good care of it, you should achieve multiple flushes of mushrooms from your grow kit before the nutrients are all used up.

HAPPY SHROOMIN’