In my experience damping off disease is usually the result from keeping your seedlings too wet and too warm. If your seedlings are in a warm place I think it is better to keep them on the dryish side. Ventilation might also help to prevent damping off disease.

Some species are more prone to damping off dieseases than others. I tried sugar pine / Pinus lambertiana several times but each time the seedlings died of damping off disease.

Best idea...germinate outdoors. That tends to be agreeable or the species would have died off.

this last fall ...

i put a dozen or so chestnuts.. into a 10 gal pot... with proper tree media ... and covered them with hardware cloth ... and left them outdoors until late nov ... and then moved them into the polebarn for winter storage ... i expect near total germ in spring ...

growing trees in the house.. is very hard ...

ken

Buckeye seeds are really easy to grow. They will almost all germinate assuming you don't make them rot. Stick them in the fridge. I put them in a open ziploc bag of sand with a damp paper towel in it. I wouldn't recommend trying to grow now because of cold requirements, taproot issues during transplant, and possibly what you are describing about the seedling not being happy in the warm dark house.
When ground thaws, plant ASAP. Buckeyes tolerate the cold temps in spring and are one of the first trees to green up (one of the reasons I like them). If you wait too long they shoot out a really long taproot, and it makes them hard to plant.

corkball, sorry, I should have mentioned that I already put them outside in my tank of soil. I was wondering if I would have needed to take them out late winter and sterilize the soil before they germinate in spring. But I'm assuming their not that prone to damping off if they're easy to grow like you say.

This post was edited by Trenton_177 on Fri, Jan 9, 15 at 11:43

hmm, well you might be wetter than us, but I have NEVER had any issues with seedlings getting sick and dying. Just make sure water has a way to drain out of your tank, and transplant as SOON as you can - they will sprout and put out an 8" taproot before they even break the surface.
As far as I can tell, buckeyes LIKE it damp and cool, but maybe someone else has seen issues with seedlings further east than MN.