Agar plates and Algae die-off cont..

This week in STEM I was finally able to prepare my plates, but now both of my algae strains are dying off! I have already refreshed the media for Arthrospira but it has yet to have a big bloom like when I started my culture. Now it is time to refresh my Nannochloropsis media because it is starting to turn brown as well. I hope to be able to plate both strains tomorrow to allow them to grow over the long weekend. I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to get my agar to set right because of my issues last week. I fully melted the agar before refrigerating the culture media, but the strange grains persisted. I cooked my agar until it foamed up so it may be because of the salinity. Luckily, when I checked my agar media before autoclaving it appeared normal and unaffected from the grits I couldn't dissolve. Autoclaving did not fully melt my agar, I had a strange bubbly lump inside my flask so I put it back into the autoclave on the "melt" setting.  Hopefully this will work!

Solid agar media

Dying algae culture