How can we grow amoebas at home? Amebas are fascinating creatures! In this video I will teach you how to cultivate your own amoebas at home.
Materials needed:
- Volvic Mineral Water
-Distilled Water 250ml
- Soil from a Forest or Garden
- Sample from Pond Containing Amoeba Proteus
- Kernels of Rice (1 for each Petri Dish)
- Becher Glas
- Petri Dishes
- Funnel
- Filter Paper
- Volumetric Flask
- Burette
- Pasteur Pipette
Lets sample some material from a pond that might contain amoebas.
Take the sample home and leave it sit for 8-10 days in a shaded place with a content temperature of around 20 degrees celsius. If there are amoebas contained their number will increase. Check regularly with a microscope if you can spot amoeba proteus.
When you have amoebas in your sample we can start to make the culture medium.
Soak the rice kernel with a few drops of distilled water and set it aside for 3 days.
While we wait for the ice to soak we can make the soil extract.
Cover the bottom of a bencher with at leat 100 mil well with soil. Top off the Becher with distilled water. And place it on a hot plate. Boil for 2-3 hours. The evaporated water has to be replaced regularly.
After the Becher is cool enough and the material has settled a bit, decant the murky liquid into a second Becher. Cover the Becher and set it aside for 3 days.
3 days later we have to filter the soil extract. But before striking it we have to wash the filter paper a few times with mineral water. The water in the flask has to be discarded.
Now we can filter the soil extract.
The filtrate will be still murky, but that is ok and depends a on the type of soil you used.
Next lets transfer the soil extract into a clean Becher.
Then lets measure 10 mils of soil extract and transfer them into the volumetric flask. You can use the same flask you used for filtration. That’s no problem at all.
Top off the volumetric flask with 90ml of bottled mineral water.
Mix thoroughly. The soil extract culture medium for amoebas is ready.
Now you can prepare one or more petri dishes and pour sufficiently, but not too much culture medium in the petri dishes.
Add the the soaked rice kernel to the culture medium in the petri dish.
Then you can a few drops of the flaky material that gathered at the bottom of the container we kept the week old pond sample.
Place the petri dish in a dark place with a constant temperature of 20 degrees celsius.
And your amoeba culture is ready to grow.
The rice kernel will provide food for bacteria which are then for microbes the amoebas prey upon. They are all contained with the amoebas in the pond sample we cultured at home. In the specialised amoeba culture the number of amoeba should increase sharply after about 10 days.
Trouble Shooting
If you have difficulties let me give you some tips:
The reasons why it won’t work are many. Let’s trouble shoot.
The wrong type of soil is one of the most important factors. Try many types of different soil and use different concentrations of soil extracts. Work your way up from 1%-10% soil extract mineral water solution.
Also an important factor is the placement of your culture. Is it too bright? Is the temperature fluctuating too much? If possible place the petri dishes in near darkness and keep the temperature around 20
I hope this was helpful!
I wish you happy amoeba farming!
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Microscopes used:
Olympus CX43
Olympus BX53
Cameras:
Sony A 6400
Fuji XT4
Canon R5
Instagram:
nomadic_nos...
Music:
www.epidemicsound.com/music
22 июл 2024
