How to retain water in the agar medium when culturing in high temperature - (Oct/14/2008 )
Hi! How to retain water in the agar medium when culturing in high temperature?
We now use preservative film to keep the water, but it will influence ventilating, are there some better methods? Thank you very much!
We now use preservative film to keep the water, but it will influence ventilating, are there some better methods? Thank you very much!
Use more agar medium would be my take. it will delay the agar from drying out too quickly.
We have to incubate plates for weeks at 37C. To keep them from drying we use shrink seals. They are plastic seals seals that shrink around your plate once exposed to a high heat source for a few seconds. They allow ventilation and plates dont dry out
Oh, thank you, we will have a try!
Another possibility: use humid chambers.
Take a box, fill it with (autoclaved) water (depends on the contamination risk), add a "second floor" above the water surface (we use glassware as pile, then put plasic as floor on it but you can use whatever you have and is suitable for your experiment).
Like little Venice in the lab. You can incubate your samples for a very long time, but you should check time by time to prevent your plates from becoming gondolas! 
use a plastic bag loosely cover up the plates and do not place it near blower.
Adding an extra 1-1.5% agar to your medium during preparation may help to reduce water loss.
We would do this, and also keep the plates in loosely closed plastic bags.
Thanks everyone!
The "little Venice", really helpful and interesting