I am beginning work with Streptococcus pneumoniae, and I am trying to preemptively determine how to deal with contamination. We will be growing them on blood agar plates, and I am assuming for the most part we would be able to visually identify contamination. But I would like to know if there are tests I can do when the difference isn't so obvious? Has anyone had problems before with specific contaminants when working with S. pneumoniae?
Also simply visual inspection of colonies on the plate and having a quick look under the microscope (spread a colony in a drop of water on an object slide) to confirm the presence of small cocci often attached in pairs or short chains.
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Add antibiotic resisted by such bacteria and highly affects the others which easy to find it in literature and incorporate it in your culture media before inoculation with suspected pneumococci.
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