I need to incubate a large number of agar plates which contain bacteria for aerobic growth. If memory serves me right you should not have more than 8 plates in a single stack. Can someone please confirm? Thanks
I am not aware of such limitation. What would be the reason? Inhomogeneous heating of the plates within the stack? Risk that a high stack may accidentally tumble?
Pierre Béguin I've personally seen the phenomena with PTS samples, where numerous technicians test the same sample, that when plates were stacked in large numbers that growth was much slower and colonies were smaller on those plates compared to replicate agar plates that were stacked in smaller numbers in the same time frame. It might have to do with the heating of the plates within the stack. Anyway after that incident all technicians there did not stack their plates too high in the incubator
I am not familiar with such limitations, but if such exists, no manufacturer will be producing large incubators that can harbor tens of plates. If the incubator is working well, the temperature should be uniform throughout the enclosure. So, many plates can be incubated at the same time. As a matter of caution however, avoid stalking fungal plates with bacterial plates.
For shaker incubator, only the numbers of holders produced show the maximum recommended number of flasks or tubes that can be incubated per time.
Overloading may compromise your research
According to ISO8199, no more than six petridishes should be stacked. The purpose of this is to ensure that all plates reach incubation temperature rapidly and to leave space between stacks for air circulation.
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