FlowCam - Flow Imaging Microscopy Blog

Freshwater aquaculture is gradually becoming common practice in sub-Saharan Africa. Rural farmers raise fish in ponds for subsistence, to boost their family’s protein intake, and to earn supplemental income to help pay to send their children to school. Cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (CyanoHABs) in these ponds, and in general, are starting to gain attention in Africa, as they can impact livestock and human health.

Have you ever wondered how our technical customer support team performs quality control checks during services and before shipping new instruments? Here's one example of the process our team uses to check for accuracy on the FlowCam Cyano.

Pictured here: Enterprise Pond at YFT headquarters in Scarborough, Maine. The source of the sample used in this demonstration.

Determining whether algal cells are alive or dead is useful for a variety of applications including, but not limited to: wastewater analysis, algaecide testing, mesocosm experiments, and ballast water monitoring. Viability staining is a common approach used in flow cytometry to evaluate the relative abundance of live and dead cells in a sample. The FlowCam 8400, equipped with a laser, digital camera, and 2 channels of fluorescence detection, can be paired with various fluorescent stains to assess the viability of algal cells. Here we will describe how to pair an example of one such stain, fluorescein diacetate (FDA), with the FlowCam 8400 equipped with a 488nm blue laser.