Dear Beate

you can try to adapt for this purpose a 96 inoculator disposable plastic tape as

http://www.ciromfg.com/products/replicator-plates.php

http://www.evergreensci.com/labware-catalog/microplates-strips-and-films/95-pin-disposable-inoculator-assembly-and-inoculum-tray-2/

Personally i'm not a great fun of the PIN system because if it is true that the biofilm formed in the PINS could be more viable there is higher probability of sample cross contamination during the pin transfer phase and therefore i prefer perform the screening in 96 well optimizing the protocoll inserting shaking and medium exchangh steps to minimize the aspecific attachment due to died cells and use the first attacched cells as a seed for the biofilm growth. (as reported in our artiche Article Acidic pH Strongly Enhances In Vitro Biofilm Formation by a ...

steps and evalutating cell viability at the end with probes as XTT or celltiter blue.

In this case you can perform a preliminary expreriment to define the best time for medium exchange, that is the minimal time that lead to the formation of a storng biofilm in terms of both CV and viability assay. The lenght of this time is really dependent from the bacteria and the media composition therefore generally we tested many different time after inoculum (e.g 1h, 2h, 4h, 6h, 8h O/N).

However some people don't like this approach and believe that the PINS are more reilable, therefore let you free to use the one that you like more.

good luck

Manuele

Batch culture of biofilm on peg lids is a versatile method that can be used for microtiter determinations of biofilm antimicrobial susceptibilty. work has been presented detailing a core protocol and set of parameters( surface composition, the of rocking or orbital motion, temperature, cultivation time . inoculum size, atmospheric gases and nutritional that can be adjusted to grow single, or multispecies bioflims on peg surfaces. For details consult Nat. Protoc. 2010, vol. 5( 7 ): 1236 - 54.

May i suggest using eppendorf tubes instead of the peg lids