Is it true that people are getting higher yields salting with fumaric acid rather than citric acid using CIELO?
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CIELO Question
- Thread starter Pandora
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We have found that the last 100 to 150mg of mescaline citrate don't precipitate. This is variable, depending on water content. In contrast, fumarate will completely crash.
Almost all the uncrashed mescaline citrate remains in the EA during reclaim and will be part of the next extraction. For citric acid users, this becomes "conditioned EA".
It doesn't really matter much, unless someone extracts a low yielding cactus such as PC with fresh EA. In this situation (usually PC), citrate could yield 0% l, while fumarate could yield 0.15% (as the most extreme example). With reclaimed/conditioned EA, there would be no big difference.
Hope this makes sense.
At the end of the day, the TEK now recommends using fumaric for this and other reasons. Cheers.
I did for sure. Also I wanted to post an interesting preparation result: I grew 25 Trichocereus b outside in pots and got a pillbug infestation. In attempting to remedy the problem I inadvertantly used a strong detergent/water solution instead of safer soap. This unfortunately destroyed the Epicuticular Wax layer and my plants were subject to extreme UV damage resulting in black to orange areas with liquid blistering under the skin covering up to 25% of some plants. As this seemed to be killing them I harvested and performed the CIELO extract/crystal procedure. The results were amazing! Previously I averaged 2.2% to 2.4% mescaline fumarate by dry weight but the damaged plants increased yield by 50% yielding an average 3.5%. I have performed 4 CIELO processes and the results are consistent. Any thoughts?
That is interesting. What detergent did you use? How long between damage and harvest? Have any pictures?
That might be an infection though. Pics would definitely help.
I used the liquid hand soap from the bulk section at the local co-op. About a week between applying the soap and seeing the damage. About another week wondering what caused it. Then I read about how detergents destroy the natural UV protection. Does the damage look like an infection? It happened to ALL of the plants within a day of each other.
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OK, that's probably soap burn - but removal of the cuticular wax would also lessen resistance to the ingress of pathogen, maybe increasing the risk of infection in sunburned sites. A strong cactus will be able to get over this and it ends up merely being a bit unsightly. Other, weaker cacti might develop an ongoing problem, however.
If by this you mean T. bridgesii, those are particularly prone to the weeping black spot disease - and, of course, sap-sucking insects or other arthropods which break the skin of the cactus are another possible infection vector.
Did you mean pillbugs, aka woodlice, or mealybugs, the latter being an all-too-common pest for the cactus grower? I've never really noticed any trouble with woodlice, but snails have sometimes munched my babies' apical meristems.
Mealybugs are an absolute plague - if you have to spray them with soap, do so in the evening next time. I'd recommend picking them off one by one with tweezers, then dabbing over any egg sacs with isopropanol.
Be careful of dropping the bugs into the soil if picking them off. Consider fitting a sheet of paper, cut to fit, around the base of the cactus to catch any would-be escapees.
Thanks for the counsel, and thanks for the proper term "T. bridgesii". I am new to this biz and it is always good to learn proper terms. So in your opinion would the removal of the protective wax and subsequent UV damage increase the mescaline production by the 50% I have seen? Armadillidiidae were observed in moderate quantities to clarify the pest situation.
Yes, it's possible that the sunburn increased mescaline production. We would need to do more tests to verify (that is why I asked which soap you used). Of course, there could be another explanation, but we should try to get to the bottom of this.
One possible experiment is to add the soap in sections. For example cover the cactus with paper towels alternatively into ~ 4 sections in the middle (+cover the head and bottom but exclude that from the extraction to propagate the head and keep on growing the rooted bottom), Then spray with soap so only two alternating exposed sections are damaged with sunburn after removing the paper towels. Then, extract each section separately. There will be 4 data points, and check if the two sunburnt sections have more mescaline. Would be fascinating data no matter what the result is. Or maybe there is another way to design an experiment around this.
It is an interesting observation/hypothesis for sure.
I've a section of bridgesii with the hideous black weeping disease that needs cutting. This thread already raises the question for me of how that affliction might have affected the mescaline content. I'm not sure how amenable to CIELO extraction those diseased bits might be - how would one go about drying it, for starters?
Gotcha, definitely pillbug woodlice then. What damage did they cause? How does it look?
Here's the horror show on one of my bridges…
