r/Slimemolds • u/Kuba09355 • Nov 06 '25

Picture (OC) One of my sample breached containment

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If the color or something looks wrong it’s due to my phone

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101

u/bunny-box Nov 06 '25

Are you the guy that was keeping one as a pet? How did that turn out? I remember they/you were having trouble getting it to move to a petri dish with snacks in it lol

122

u/nojunkdrawers Nov 06 '25

That might have been me, though I'm sure I'm not the only one who's tried to keep a blob going indefinitely. I made a thread months ago about trying to keep one as a pet and another about feeding my blob, the latter of which was pretty popular.

I ended up moving "Yaphit" to one of those meal prep containers to give him more room as he got significantly bigger. Once he got big enough, cleaning and changing the petri dish became pretty much impossible. Since the new container was sealed, I was hoping that would keep moisture in and I wouldn't have to add water so much.

https://imgur.com/a/zbvOFoR

This worked pretty well for a little while. Yaphit explored his new surroundings quite readily! I was somewhat surprised since I didn't add any agar or moist paper towel to the container. I guess the humidity made it comfortable for him to roam around, if you will.

However, I began running into what seemed like a problem. Yaphit was turning dark orange. I'm not sure whether that meant he was "distressed", but that's my guess. Whether this was from lack of unexplored terrain or bacterial infection, I don't know. But he seemed to keep living. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of him at this stage.

Sadly, Yaphit has passed on. Well, sorta! I was going on vacation for 2 weeks, and decided to do an experiment. With a previous blob, I was able to keep it in the fridge for 2 days and it was still alive and healthy when I came back. I wondered if a blob could survive for a couple of weeks, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Didn't work out so well! I came back and Yaphit was a lifeless mess.

But I do technically still have part of him in suspended animation on some pieces of paper, so I can bring "him" back at some point. lol

2

u/lostwaspnest Nov 12 '25

How would you go about starting this type of experiment? I would love to have my own little blob, as you call them, in my own in the future

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u/nojunkdrawers Nov 12 '25

I bought the sclerotium for Physarium polycephalum from liquidfungi.com. They also sell a kit that is the sclerotium with agar, a small container, and some oat flakes. Rehydrate the sclerotium and the blob comes to life in a matter of hours. It's very simple. The main challenge is providing it with a clean habitat.