Products Services Ordering Support Product Support About Us Careers Contact Us Technical FAQs The following are the questions most often asked of our Technical Services Department. Please consult reference sources and request Instructions for Use (IFU) for complete information on the items mentioned in these sections. Quality Control Q. What kinds of clinical media require end user quality control? Q. What organisms do I need to use to QC the media? Q. Do I have to use all of the organisms listed on the technical information sheet? Q. What should the reactions look like? Q. How can I keep track of lot numbers and expiration dates without doing a lot of writing? Q. How often should I QC microbiology reagents like indole, oxidase, and beta-lactamase? ▲ back to top Media in General Q. Where does your sheep blood come from? Q. Should I use a heavy or light inoculum when setting up biochemical tests? Q. Which tubes should be incubated with tight caps? Q. Which kinds of media require an oil overlay? Q. What should I do when my Fluid Thioglycollate Broths turn pink all over? Q. What should I do when my motility media has bubbles in it? Q. Can I inoculate plates right after taking them out of the refrigerator? Q. Why does my Lauryl Tryptose Broth have a shiny precipitate? Q.When I received my media, the Durham tubes already contained bubbles. Q.Why are some of my Dilu-Lok™ vials yellow? ▲ back to top Stock Culture Maintenance and Preservation Q. What is the best way to preserve cultures for long-term storage? Q. Why does Campy fail to grow when I try to reconstitute the lyophilized pellets? Q. Once the Campy is growing, how do I keep it alive? Q. Are there special requirements for reconstituting certain lyophilized microorganisms? ▲ back to top Contamination Q. How can I reduce the frequency of skin contamination in my blood cultures? Q. What should I do with contaminated plates? ▲ back to top Technical Data/Instructions for Use (IFU) Q. How do I get a Technical Data Sheet/Instruction for Use (IFU) for your media? ▲ back to top Safety Data Sheets (SDS)/Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) Q. How do I get an SDS for your media? ▲ back to top Storage Q. Why should media be stored in the dark? Q. Why are my plates sometimes too soft and have a rough surface? Q. How can I store my media so it will stay as fresh as possible? ▲ back to top Incubation Q. At what temperature should I adjust my incubator? Q. How should I clean my incubator? ▲ back to top Loops Q. What is the best method of streaking, and which kind of loops are the best? Q. Can I use a nichrome loop for the oxidase test? Q. What is the easiest way to check the accuracy of my calibrated loops? ▲ back to top Susceptibility Testing Q. Why should I use an MRSA Screen plate in addition to a regular Mueller Hinton? Q. Can I use the MRSA Screen plate when screening for methicillin-resistant, coagulase-negative Staphylococcus spp.? Q. What should I do when my QC zone sizes are out of range for one or two antimicrobics when testing my Mueller Hinton Agar? Q. What is the most current source of information on zone size limits for disk diffusion tests? Q. How do I measure a double zone? Q. When physicians request information on antimicrobials, they sometimes use their brand names rather than generic names; such as “Cefobid,” “Flagyl,” “Primaxin,” “Suprax,” “Timentin,” and “Unasyn.” Is there a good reference source on the newer antimicrobics? Q. What stock organism should I use to QC my beta-lactamase test? Q. How do I perform QC on the HTM plates for Haemophilus influenzae susceptibility testing? Q. How do I perform a disk diffusion test on N. gonorrhoeae? Q. Which kind of beta-lactamase test should I be using? Q. How should I screen for Extended-Spectrum Beta-Lactamases (ESBLs) and other mechanisms of resistance? Q. How do I recognize unusual susceptibility patterns? Q. How do I screen for reduced susceptibility to vancomycin and vancomycin resistance in staphylococci? Q. How can I best store my antimicrobial disks? Q. How do I store my quality control strains for sensitivity testing? Q. When do I use transmitted light to read my sensitivity plates? ▲ back to top Spot Tests and Rapid Tests Q. Which indole reagent should I be using? Q. How can I do a simple confirmation test for Branhamella ( Moraxella ) catarrhalis? Q. Why are my CatScreen™ disks turning blue? Q. What types of oxidase reagents do you have? Q. What types of rapid test kits and reagents do you have? ▲ back to top Transport Media Q. Is there a single transport media I can use for Chlamydia, Herpes, and Mycoplasma? ▲ back to top Parasitology Q. The disposal of mercury-containing PVA is becoming more of a problem in our lab. What is a good substitute? ▲ back to top Mycology Media Q. What is the best media for fungal cultures? Q. How can I do a Germ Tube test for Candida without the hazards of using human serum? Q. How can I keep my mycology plates from drying out when I incubate them for long periods of time? Q. Do you have a chromogenic medium for Candida? Q. What is the easiest way to perform a slide culture? Q. Do you have a rapid test for the identification of Candida albicans? ▲ back to top Haemophilus Q. Why do I occasionally get slight growth in the X quadrant of the Haemophilus ID Quad plate? Q. How can I prevent an overgrowth of normal respiratory flora when culturing for Haemophilus? ▲ back to top GC Media (Neisseria gonorrhoeae ) Q. Why should Transgrow Bottles not be tilted when inoculating? Q. After inoculating my Martin Lewis with Lincomycin Pill Pocket Plate, should I put a drop of water on the CO 2tablet? Q. Why do bacteria other than GC grow on the Thayer Martin plates? Q. How come N. gonorrhoeae can grow on a regular Blood Agar Plate? Q. What is a good way to confirm the identification of N. gonorrhoeae? ▲ back to top Enteric Media Q. What is the best media for isolating Shigella? Q. Why do the enteric plates sometimes look like they are contaminated with fungus? Q. Is there any advantage to using the new Blood-Free Campy media? Q. Do you have a rapid test to help identify Campylobacter spp.? Q. How can I isolate and identify E. coli O157:H7? ▲ back to top EnteroScreen 4™ Q. How do I interpret a yellow slant on an EnteroScreen 4™ tube? Q. Can I use the EnteroScreen 4™ to speciate enteric organisms? ▲ back to top Staph Identification Q. With my latex kit for Staphylococcus , I sometimes get rough negatives or weak positives. Q. Can I do the latex test on colonies taken from Mannitol Salt Agar? Q. Do you have a test to help differentiate S. lugdunensis? ▲ back to top Strep Media Q. What additional tests can I do to confirm group A strep? Q. What rapid tests do you have for the identification of gram-positive, catalase-negative cocci? Q. Sometimes I have difficulty in getting reliable results using the CAMP test for group B strep. Q. How can I test for group B strep from a vaginal/rectal OB specimen? Q. What is “Blood Agar EH”? Q. What exactly does your “Selective Strep Agar” select for? Q. How can I differentiate between a possible pathogenic Enterococcus species and a non-pathogenic one? ▲ back to top Anaerobes Q. How can I get the best recovery of anaerobes from my Thioglycollate Broth? Q. What is the best media for preserving stock cultures of anaerobes? Q. How can I optimize my recovery of anaerobes? ▲ back to top Gardnerella Vaginalis Q. Why does V Agar have such a short outdate? Q. What are some other tests to help confirm the identification of Gardnerella vaginalis? ▲ back to top Mycobacteria Q. My AFB cultures often turn out contaminated after doing the digestion procedure. Q. During digestion procedures, how do I know that the specimen has been adequately neutralized by the buffer? Q. How can I culture for the types of mycobacteria that will not grow on ordinary Middlebrook and Lowenstein Jensen? ▲ back to top References Q. What is the best reference source for clinical microbiology? Q. What is the best source of help for writing a procedure manual for microbiology? ▲ back to top Inoculation Procedures for Media QC Q. What are your inoculation procedures for media QC? Limitations of Procedures and Warranty Q. What are your limitations of procedures and warranty? A. Refer to the limitation of procedures and warranty document available here. ATCC is a registered trademark of the American Type Culture Collection. Tween is a registered trademark of ICI Americas, Inc. AnaeroGen is a trademark of Oxoid, Ltd. 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