Between tap water, distilled water, double distilled water and deionized water, which one is mostly recommended to be used to prepare agar media for microbiological purposes?
Dstilled water is the best option for making agar media.
Not tap water, but for simple growth media you can use distilled or deionized. You can use double distilled but you don't require it.
You do not need ultrapure water for growth media, however tap water may have lots of salt and chlorine and such which could be toxic to your cells.
Fresh, high quality water prepared by distillation, de-ionisation, or reverse osmosis is recommended for the satisfactory reconstitution of culture media. Tap water should not be used as it contains impurities such as calcium and magnesium and their metal ion traces.
@Michael J. Benedik. Thank you for the good explanation and knowledge. I'm grateful.
@Mustapha Umar Thank you for sharing the knowledge. I will consider your concern
In my work I use sterile distilled water and sterile deionized water,choice the type of water depends on type of bacteria that you want to grow
Fresh, high quality prepared by distillation, deionnization, or reversed osmosis is recommended for the satisfactory reconsistitution of culture media.
It depends on the sensitivity of the organism or the assay to changes in the ionic constituents of water. Sterile tap water and distilled water are moderately used for general purpose agar media, while deionized water is often recommended for specific, ion-sensitive organisms and bioassays.
Distilled water,deionised water is the best
Tap water contains impuries eg minerals like calcium and magnesium in unknown quantities which might interfere with growth of bacteria
Dear, Farid Mzee Mpatani,,
Distilled water is very suitable to prepare the different agar media for microbiological purposes.
Some time if the distilled water is rare or absent, you can use tap water free from salt. Because its already be sterilized by autoclave before using, therefore it should be safe.
SEE FOLLOWING LINK
https://www.merckmillipore.com/INTL/en/water-purification/learning-centers/applications/cells-and-bacteria/microbiological-media/water-impact/6Qib.qB.JWMAAAFANZoBvVUs,nav?ReferrerURL=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&bd=1
Water quality defined as pure water or Type 2 water grade by water purification system manufacturers is recommended for media preparation for microbiology. This is prepared by a combination of technologies including activated carbon, reverse osmosis and electrode ionization. A 0.2 µm filter may be added at the point of delivery to ensure low microbial count. The combination of these technologies ensures:
- The removal of chlorine or similar oxidant present in tap water
- A resistivity > 5 MΩ.cm
- A low microbial count
- A constant water quality
- Low organic content (< 30 ppb or µg/L)
When I want to obtain the zoospores of some Oomycetes, I have used a tap water to obtain them easily. While they have not appear when I have used the distilled water.
It may depend upon the types of media supposed to be prepare but usually, distilled water is prefered to prepare different agar media in microbiology laboratory.
Using sterile double distilled water is preferred during agar media preparation.
Distilled water is good option as ionization of water is very very negligible and not harmful for growth
It depends on your water supply quality, the hardness of the water and what you are trying to achieve. You cannot use tap water and autoclave it in a hard water because scale will form on the glass.
In a hard water area, with single distilled water CO2 will re-absorb into the distilled water and cause the pH to drop, which may upset the media pH.
De-ionised water will have neutral pH but you need to keep a close eye on the conductivity of the water and can grow bacteria on the resin. My own preference was for De-ionised followed by distillation.
There is another method, Reverse Osmosis which takes out 90-95% of dissolved solids and the water from that can be distilled.
As for spore formation, I preferred to add select mineral salts back into the water to provide a chemically defined media.
@Don Sharpe, Muhammad Faheem, Zahid Fazal, Abdur Rauf, Pradip Mahato, Arindam Roy, Sandita Shrestha, Yehya A. Salih, Alexander Nti Kani, Saad. S.M. Al-Azawi thank you very much for your contributions. I really appreciate the knowledge you have provided.
Single distilled water is usually desirable for preparing microbial media.
There's no gold standard. But single distilled water is preferable.
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