Very strange bacteria sighting! [With Photos and Videos] - (Nov/16/2014 )

I have been culturing Kefir (friendly 'probiotic' bacteria drink) for 9 years. I recently put it under my compound microscope to see all the bacteria. For the first 10 kefir slides I prepared, everything appeared pretty normal. It looked very similar to the other kefir microscopy videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3riPLhESXQ or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HL5iOE3kT8

They looked exactly like that, nothing more to it. 

Then, I took another sample, from the same general area from where I got the other samples. I dipped the pipette into the kefir culturing jar and collected one drop of kefir. I put it under the microscope to find a chaotic "colony" of bacteria:

-Here is an IMGUR album I made showing the slide at different magnifications, up to 2000x: http://imgur.com/a/yXDhW

The whole entire slide was this crowded with bacteria. There were 0 'clumps' of the still "stuff" like in every other sample I took. 

Afterwards I kept taking more samples from he same area in the jar to see if I could get the same result, but I kept getting the normal look as I was talking about before. Why was this one drop of kefir I collected so condensed with live bacteria? Is this a rare or normal occurance? What is going on? I am a somewhat beginner in microbiology so details would help, thank you! 

  -if the GIF images arent loading just wait, they take a while

It's a little hard to say - ideally you would take some of the bacteria and fix them on a slide and then stain, which would (hopefully) help identify them. Motion like you are seeing is probably Brownian motion rather than active swimming like you would find with flagellate bacteria.

As I understand it Kefir is a fairly complex mix of bacteria and yeasts, so identification could be difficult, and it is hard to say what should be going on at any one time, other than if you fed them recently, then there should be lots of actively metabolising bacteria etc, but these would not usually be confined to one area unless there is some sort of environmental change in the culture that would keep them in this area.

There are two options here: either this is a normal part of your culture, or it is a contaminant of some sort. Contaminants will usually grow fast, and as you are an experienced grower, you will likely be able to tell if you have one of these fairly soon. As they are proabably non-flagellate, they are less likely to be pathogenic to you than more motile bacteria would be, if they do turn out to be a contaminant.

hi,

actually identification from kefir isn't so diffucult. As you know, kefir is a mix culture of lactic acid bacteria. You can use  de Man-Rogosa -Sharpe  (MRS) agar plate for lactic acid bacteria. If you suspect yeasts you can use Saboroud Dextrose Agar plate for yeast. In this way you can analyse  microbiological flora of your culture. But firstly you should take some bacteria on a slide and stain. If you don't see Gram positive bacteria, you can use a general medium like nutrient agar for isolation .

Are you sure this was 2000x? What kind of equipment and preparation were you using?

Phil Geis on Mon Nov 24 12:22:52 2014 said:

Are you sure this was 2000x? What kind of equipment and preparation were you using?

Yes I am sure. I was using 20x eyepieces and 100x lenses, oil immersed. On the imgur page scroll down to see the 2000x picture, its at the bottom.