From owner-drosophila@net.bio.net Tue Aug 13 23:00:00 1996 Path: biosci!lamg.com!Tritech_Research From: Tritech_Research@lamg.com (Tritech Research) Newsgroups: bionet.drosophila Subject: Re: Incubators for Drosophila Date: 14 Aug 1996 06:04:07 -0700 Organization: Los Angeles Macintosh Group BBS Lines: 79 Sender: daemon@net.bio.net Distribution: world Message-ID: <193921023.3026767@lamg.com> Reply-To: Tritech_Research@lamg.com NNTP-Posting-Host: net.bio.net Hi, Does anybody have any advice on what style of incubators are best for keeping Drosophila. We are mainly concerned with the problem of humidity. We have a refrigerated incubator by Thermoline (Australia) that has a relative humidity of ~20% @ 25 deg. C. We are finding it a bit of a battle to stop our fly media (fruit based) from drying out. Apparently this type of incubator (i.e. basically just a converted refrigerator with a heater on top) is always going to be a bit dry due to the moisture in the circulating air condensing on the cool refrigerating surface. For those of you in Australia any information of companies and brand names would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help, Michael Murray mmurray@metz.une.edu.au ------------------------ We're not in Australia, but we sell both in the US and internationally. Thanks for your inquiry about our incubators. Our units use heating *or* cooling - not both, and the inside air is circulated, but not with outside air, so, for example, Petri dishes last a long time in there without drying out. Basically, there are two models: The base model either heats or cools (you set the mode manually). It is perfect for all applications as long as the temperature you are trying to achieve is always on one side of ambient temperature. The "Smart Controller" model has a second thermostat that monitors the ambient temperature and automatically switches between heating and cooling modes when necessary. For example, you need this model to maintain 25C if on some days the lab is 20C and other days it is 30C. The base model is $499 and the Smart Controller Model is $649. Here is the catalog description: --------------------------------------- Tritech Research's energy efficient, digital, heating and cooling incubator allows you to set your desired temperature in a matter of seconds and maintain it with about 0.1C precision. Our electronic thermostat and thermoelectric pump replace the traditional controllers, heating coils and Freon systems that waste energy and take hours to calibrate for your experiments. Our solid-state Temperature Control Module is precise within 0.1C up to 50C when heating, and down to 10C when cooling. The temperature probe is movable so that you can control the temperature more accurately within a container if your experiment demands it. Entirely insulated, our incubator has an internal fan to re- circulate the inside air for even temperature distribution without drying out your samples. The 32 liter interior dimension (16" x 14" x 21") can hold 100 100mm dishes, 400 60mm dishes or 1000 35mm dishes. You can figure out how many fly vials that equals. Great for temperature-shift experiments! I would be happy to send you our full 1996 catalog, which includes the DigiTherm Heating/Cooling Incubators. The prices in there are still valid. If you would like a catalog, please e-mail me with the address you would like it sent to. ------------------------------------ If you have any questions, just ask. Andy Papp tritech_research@LAMG.com .