Hey Michelle, The easiest way to find out if it's the recycled regeants is to use fresh reagents and see how the stain looks. Obvisously if it still shows sign of a lack of color or detail than I would think it could be the stains themselves.
What manufacture and type of Hematoxylin and Eosin are you using? Thanks, Tim Message: 9 Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 07:06:19 -0400 From: "histot...@imagesbyhopper.com" <histot...@imagesbyhopper.com> Subject: [Histonet] Recycled alcohol To: "Histonet@Lists. Utsouthwestern. Edu" <histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu> Message-ID: <a7b6c430-34ed-4666-86e5-8d2fa304f...@imagesbyhopper.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Hi Histonetters! For those who use recycled alcohol, I have a few questions. Do you use it in your automatic H&E stainers? Are you having any troubles with proper, consistent H&E staining? We are using recycled alcohol, and wish to continue to do so IF we can. We are having issues with our staining - hematoxylin isn't as purple as it should be, eosin is way too pink/red. We use recycled alcohol when deparaffinizing and running down to water. For the record, we are also using recycled xylene. After staining, we use 2 recycled 100s and two fresh 100s. I have increased the hem time, decreased the eosin time, adjusted the acid alcohol and bluing... I'm tearing my hair out trying to troubleshoot this! Can anyone help me? Thanks! Michelle _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet