sounds like you are running round in circles

so enough with the sublety

THE INCUBATOR IS NOT THE PROBLEM!

a quick clean out to get rid of large clumbs of yuck will do

these contaminations are most often spread by touch - the time you are spending autoclaving large clumps of metal would be better spent checking your technique with a pro.

trust me - most likely problem was YOU - once you realise this its then the easiest thing to improve your skills and make sure it doesnt happen again (its not a blame thing - even the best of us mess up - you have to realise no technique is ever going to be perfect and neither are you - but you can be so damn close its scary )

so enough with the scrubbing

dom

I so hope you are right! The scrubbing thing is no fun at all...

After leaving the plates there, one with the media that I used and another with the medium from my other cell line (that is fine), the first got contaminated and the other didn't. So I am guessing you are right, it does sound like the incubator is ok! Otherwise, something should had grown on the other medium, left open there for 5 days, right?

By the way, I'm not denying it's my technique - if I am the only one who touches my cells, I know I am the one who got the contamination in the first place! (snif, snif) I just want to make sure that I didn't contaminated something else as well (eg, the incubator), so that I can be on the safe side once I start over with a new stock.

Thanks for all the tips, I'll let you know how it goes.