Is it bad to use bleach to clean a water bath? Or is there a better way to clean it? I've been having contamination problems in my cells and I'm trying to really sterilize everything.
Chelsea,
Water baths are the number 1 source of contamination in cell culture labs. You can avoid 99% of contamination just by avoiding water baths. There is a misconception that one needs to use warm media all the time. I usually leave the media out for some time to warm up to room temperature. If you are really bent on warming your media, use the incubator or heating blocks. I cannot stress enough the futility of using water bath for warming up media. I was able to eliminate contamination in my lab just by avoiding the water baths. I now use only dry baths or heating blocks.
Thank you! The bath armor beads look really interesting! Ill definitely look into that.
I use very simple method .. Change water every 3 days and every month you can clean water bath by cirtic acid 10% soln (w/v) : let water boil and then turn off the water bath add citric acid soln let that overnight in the next day remove water rinse it by dist water ,dry the water bath with clean toal
I use the Bath Armor beads. I spray the beads with 70% alcohol and mix every month. No contamination problems. They work great. Good luck.
Chelsea,
Water baths are the number 1 source of contamination in cell culture labs. You can avoid 99% of contamination just by avoiding water baths. There is a misconception that one needs to use warm media all the time. I usually leave the media out for some time to warm up to room temperature. If you are really bent on warming your media, use the incubator or heating blocks. I cannot stress enough the futility of using water bath for warming up media. I was able to eliminate contamination in my lab just by avoiding the water baths. I now use only dry baths or heating blocks.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Cell Biology
- Methods