Pouring media

Once the media have been auto-claves, it is necessary to pour them into plates as soon as possible, as the agar in the medium will solidify upon cooling.    One of my first mistakes was to make too many different media at once.  It was difficult to pour them all in a time, some cooled too much so that the bottom of the flask congealed.  

These plates are marked with a black/green/red line to denote the R2A medium.

A medium made with 500ml of water will make 20 plates.

Plates are poured under sterile conditions under a hood, and left to solidify.

This was a whole day's work.  10 test tubes of marine broth and 140 petri dishes, 20 of each of 

the seven different media, marked with their specific ID stripes to distinguish them easily.