Australia's Science Forum

Hi,

I am new to working in NSW and am wondering what can we use in schools in regards to living specimens?
I am interested in getting Slime Moulds, Fruit Flies, various types of protozoa and invertebrates and some bacteria broths such as e.coli and Staph. If anyone could tell me if we can have these in schools in NSW and guidelines we need to stick to that would be great. Thank you.

Regards,

Kerri

If you are working in a NSW govt school the Chemical Safety in Schools Manuals Vol II has a lot of info that covers most stuff you will do.

Hi Kerri,

Just curious, why do you want to culture your own E coli & Staph broths? They can be bought when you need them from Southern Biological.
We have just got some very cute baby stick insects, we have axolotls which we have sucessfully bred and we are getting a water dragon. I am wondering what a slime mould is though. Have a look at the attached web site, I hope it is a safe one to post.
http://www.schools.nsw.edu.au/animalsinschools/

Cheers
Lisa

We are just buying the broths already made from Southern Biological and jsut them to innoculate plates so the students can see what they look like.
Slime mould is pretty cool. Should check it out on the Southern Biological website. Have used before and really good for junior science. Grows so quick and is harmless and good to conduct their own reserach experiment.

Cool I will have a look.

We buy the cultures in too. There was a good recipe on here for peppercorn infusion which is Bacillus subtilis bacteria. I havent tried it yet but we will this year, safer than E coli etc, may be good for a comparison?

We are about to breed fruit flies for genetics. I was wondering the same thing but after correspondence with the Dept of Primary Industries, the fruit flies you can buy from Southern Biological are fine as long as you don't breed the "true" fruit fly which originates from QLD.

Cool thank you so much for all the replies. Very helpful.