Doctor Mario said:

redbee said:

Alright... tomentose or mold? This is A+ from a spore syringe, second transfer, prior transfer looked the same.



I know the pink food coloring can prompt weird behavior, and I've stopped using it since pouring this batch of plates—I just transferred a punch of this to a plate with blue coloring for T3, so we'll see if that makes a difference. Whatcha think, am I wasting my time by transferring it, or is there hope this'll thicken up a bit?

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That definitely looks like mold. Its too sporadic. Even tomentose growth has uniformity. I literally just got back from throwing away some bad plates two of which had a very similar looking mold on them.

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WunFunGai said:

Inthepit said:

Normlizer420 said:

Sorry if its been posted but whats everyones tek for getting nice uniform consistent transfer samples?

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Yer kidding right? A TC been here 17 yrs?

Anyway...D3 has a really nice write up.

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Trvth:


Enjoy.

WFG

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D3monic said:

WunFunGai said:

Inthepit said:

Normlizer420 said:

Sorry if its been posted but whats everyones tek for getting nice uniform consistent transfer samples?

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Yer kidding right? A TC been here 17 yrs?

Anyway...D3 has a really nice write up.

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Trvth:


Enjoy.

WFG

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Hnnnng, something about those perfect slightly rotating growths just makes me happy as fck. Great looking congrats!

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Hey! Wow! Thanks! That means a lot. That's all you though...Thanks for the kind words, it would not have happened without you taking the time and effort to share your knowledge.

I saw your tek linked to Dr. Mario's sig when he posted on my log of first attempts at plates and isolation and was intrigued...I liked the agar punch, came up with a simple variant based on that, then tried the LME recipe you shared and got some plates so clear it was crazy.

Thanks for sharing and taking the time to put the tek together. I know first hand how much care and consideration is put into stepping back to look at your process, then put something together that can be shared with others that hopefully won't throw them off

I'm having fun refining and reworking my process and hope I can share something useful one day as well...

Much respect  

WFG

Surf707 said:

Yeah, flipping upside down. Sweet that’s a relief. And I figured the second pic was kinda funky. I took a transfer from the very end because it looked decent but the rest is getting tossed. Thanks for the reassurance, thought I was going to have to trash a decent amount of plates

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RogerRabbit said:

alkap555 said:

Yo man, having worked with agar and liquid cultures for years (grad student in pharmacology and neuroscience) my tricks to avoid condensation are:

1)Don't pour your agar straight out of the autoclave or PC...let it cool significantly so its still free-flowing but not SUPER hot.

2)After you pour, wait until they cool for a solid couple hours b4 you parafilm (or saran-wrap)them.

3) Whenever you incubate/store plates, store them UPSIDE DOWN!! Otherwise you are gonna get condensation that will drip onto your cultures and mess everything up.

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Sorry, but that's very bad advice on all three counts.

1)  Let the agar cool until you can pour it without heat protection for your hands.  It will cool to somewhere just thinner than honey.  This will eliminate nearly all condensation.

2)  Wrap immediately or place back in the sleeve they came packed in, with the dishes in a vertical stack.  This eliminates the temperature differential from plate to plate which causes condensation.

3)  Never store petri dishes upside down.  Moisture will puke out of the agar due to gravity and pool up on the lid, ruining the culture when the dish is flipped back over.  There's a big difference in how medical labs use petri dishes when they're trying to ID a bacterium.  In this case, they only keep the culture for a few hours to a few days max.  In mycology, we often keep plates a week or longer.  Being upside down is bad news for that long.
RR

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WunFunGai said:

Anyone know what that is?

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I had those once after I sneezed

Quote:

Inthepit said: two auto immaculate contams out of 20 from
9/11.

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Inthepit said:

Here we go again, two auto immaculate contams out of 20 from
9/11 eight days ago. The latest all out attempt, pant, pant!

                     

A real doosey eh? This was the bottom plate of a stack of five.
I'm still getting used to handling plates, like the bottom tends to drop
trying to pick them up. The bottom may have dropped 3 times.
Both contaminated plates were bottom of the stackers.

It's a real wrestling match wrapping just 5 plates.
I have to battle keeping the bottom from dropping out.
Even single wrapped plates kinda rattle with a loose bottom.

Stacks of 5 because that's what fits in the dresser drawer.

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Dude. I feel you!

lifting that bottom plate is a PITA. Especially a fumbly thumbly guy like myself.

I was thinking of cleaning out my contam plates, filling them with sand from the beach that's been soaked in bleach to sterilize them,  then seal them up so I have two weighted plates to use as a platform when pouring. Or is that just asking for trouble? I want the weight so the bottom doesn't slide around so easy.

I'm glad I'm not alone. I just had a lucky first pour where my first 20 plates ever were clean.

Crazy pic though. Thanks for sharing it.

WFG