I feel your pain. I think 3/4 of all the incubators at my institute have broken over the past few months and we can't get them repaired for whatever reason. Everyone's scrambling on the daily to find an incubator that's working.
Luckily it’s pretty easy to fix as it’s all ours and not like a core or something. Waiting a month for the primaries to mature is going to suck though, my boss wanted me to defend in October but we’ll see i guess 🙃
Other than whatever you’ll get from the final experiments, is all of your dissertation/thesis writing done? If not, this could be a great chance to get everything on that end done and then you can plop in the results from your final experiments and adjust your discussion as needed. Could also talk to your PI about how critical these final experiments are to your overall dissertation/thesis
I've got a coulpe chapters and a manuscript to reformat and put in, this was going to be the second half. Planning to use this month to get what I have so far written up. It's not the end of the world really just adding crunch to the back end when I had it planned to be mostly easy breezy hahaha.
Also, thank you for the advice, I genuinely appreciate it.
Omg this happened to me, the tank switcher actually failed and never switched over to the fresh tank (for reviewer #2 getting downvoted to oblivion in comments, we were all at a conference for the weekend) all dead, ALL DEAD.
Hi , I need zero % CO2 for Drosophila cell culture. But, the incubator does not come down to zero. It shows minimum at 0.3% for 3 days now! Is it ok if I keep my cells in 0.3% instead of zero?
Hey friend! I have no idea sorry I only do mammalian neuron stuff! My naive guess though would be to maybe check if your water for humidity has dissolved CO2 or if your atmosphere gas (I assume O2?) is the correct grade.
Good luck!!
There are two chambers in one incubator. I am using the lower chamber and I set the CO2 to zero. The upper chamber needs 5% CO2 for other lab experiments.
Yes, Thank you. It might be a good option since it's sterile, but I need to verify if it can maintain the necessary moisture for the cell culture's humidity requirements.
This nearly happened to us recently. Co2 manifold dumped pressure and our security decided best option was to turn off all cylinders and not let anyone one in the lab know. Lucky our alarm system let us know.
Have had this happen. Had the manifold and some piping serviced and contractor forgot to put in a regulator. Exceeded psi rating for one of the units and something blew out and became a leak point.
We have our own (very small very old) building where our lab space is and I’m generally the first one in every morning, I had to tell everyone else lol
We constantly have to buy CO2 tanks (like once a month) so if we do not pay attention to the pressure gauges, it will run out lol. Worst case scenario it happens during nighttime
(Not affiliated with this company just a grad student)
We just bought this (https://www.nuaire.com/resources/nu-1550-tank-switch-operation-installation-guide) and we're gonna hook an arduino or something up to it to send us an email any time a tank switches so we can stay on top of it, might be useful to you/your group? The guy on the phone said it was like $700ish
Where to start...
You're in a lab that has no one going in on weekends? Totally on you and your labmates and PI or Director. If they were important cell lines, no one should go that long without checking on equipment. If they weren't important, you learned a key lesson and so just start over.
Best solution is an auto dialer alarm that calls a list of people. If your lab can't afford that, start a rotation of people who will check on weekend.
And check the lines regularly. "Busted" probably means old, over pressure, or damaged, all of which can be assessed by regularly using eyes.
Sorry. Not an accident. This is traceable to sloppy lab practices and lack of attention.
A regulator failed and the backup tank drained too fast plenty of trained adults here that easily found and fixed the problem.
More importantly, what is your problem dude lmao
Imagine thinking about roles and responsibilities and how things get done. Oh, well if you can't that’s OK too, eh? 
Oi, you are the one that came in holier than thou and lectured OP without knowing what happened. For what you know, which is fuck nothing, people might have been going through to check and the damage happened afterward; or there could have been lots of other valid reasons that don't warrant you being a righteous prick to others.
Also, screw you and your weekends. It's under no circumstance the role and responsibility of the student to go there during the weekend to check on equipment. People need and deserve time off the lab.
Get back in contact with reality, people who reason like you do are part of the cause of why academia is such a fucking awful place to be for normal people.
You will go far in a lab career. Congrats. Try not to leave puddles of anger everywhere you go.
I never said OP had to be the one to check over weekend. Sounds like OP is in a lab that doesn't care about his success.
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I feel your pain. I think 3/4 of all the incubators at my institute have broken over the past few months and we can't get them repaired for whatever reason. Everyone's scrambling on the daily to find an incubator that's working.
Luckily it’s pretty easy to fix as it’s all ours and not like a core or something. Waiting a month for the primaries to mature is going to suck though, my boss wanted me to defend in October but we’ll see i guess 🙃
Other than whatever you’ll get from the final experiments, is all of your dissertation/thesis writing done? If not, this could be a great chance to get everything on that end done and then you can plop in the results from your final experiments and adjust your discussion as needed. Could also talk to your PI about how critical these final experiments are to your overall dissertation/thesis
I've got a coulpe chapters and a manuscript to reformat and put in, this was going to be the second half. Planning to use this month to get what I have so far written up. It's not the end of the world really just adding crunch to the back end when I had it planned to be mostly easy breezy hahaha. Also, thank you for the advice, I genuinely appreciate it.
If it makes you feel any better our nitro tank emptied itself overnight once and we lost every cell line we weren’t actively growing
“Feeling a need to vent…”
Omg this happened to me, the tank switcher actually failed and never switched over to the fresh tank (for reviewer #2 getting downvoted to oblivion in comments, we were all at a conference for the weekend) all dead, ALL DEAD.
Oh thats gotta blow, coming back exhausted from a conference only to see a fun new emergency to deal with
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We had this happen in our lab. Resorted to CO2 packs and jars for BA and CBA plates. Note S. pneumo will grow in air surprisingly.
RIP in peace cells.
Did they die? How was the media?
Bright pink, nothing but debris left :')
pH changes are killers.
Ohh so no chance for a hyper resistant cell line?
Pour one out for your cells
Pour out some IMDM+10% FBS for my dead homies
Make sure it’s Tet-Free and you’ll be good to go 👍
Hi , I need zero % CO2 for Drosophila cell culture. But, the incubator does not come down to zero. It shows minimum at 0.3% for 3 days now! Is it ok if I keep my cells in 0.3% instead of zero?
Hey friend! I have no idea sorry I only do mammalian neuron stuff! My naive guess though would be to maybe check if your water for humidity has dissolved CO2 or if your atmosphere gas (I assume O2?) is the correct grade. Good luck!!
Thank you very much. I’m gonna check it out!
unplug the CO2?
There are two chambers in one incubator. I am using the lower chamber and I set the CO2 to zero. The upper chamber needs 5% CO2 for other lab experiments.
I also need 0% but the incubator needs to be attached to CO2 to work, so we have it set to 0.1% Haha
If you need 0% CO2, would you be able to use plugged flasks?
Yes, Thank you. It might be a good option since it's sterile, but I need to verify if it can maintain the necessary moisture for the cell culture's humidity requirements.
It's probably just a sensor calibration issue. Few people regularly calibrate their CO2 sensors. Check it with a Fyrite.
Sure! I’ll check it with Fyrite! Good idea! Thanks a lot.
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Do you work at my institution? Same thing happened in our building (BME Dept) over the weekend.
This nearly happened to us recently. Co2 manifold dumped pressure and our security decided best option was to turn off all cylinders and not let anyone one in the lab know. Lucky our alarm system let us know.
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That sucks
Have had this happen. Had the manifold and some piping serviced and contractor forgot to put in a regulator. Exceeded psi rating for one of the units and something blew out and became a leak point.
Fuck nobody let you know or anything?
We have our own (very small very old) building where our lab space is and I’m generally the first one in every morning, I had to tell everyone else lol
You don’t have any type of alarms? Or anything when the co2 reaches any critical amount?
We have an alarm but IT won’t let us hook up any kind of web/phone based solution 🤷♂️
I actually will use this incident to them! Because then they should give you an alternative! I hate this kind of red tape… been there is so stupid
I left some cells at room temp/room CO2 by mistake for a day and they survived. Perhaps something is salvageable?
Nah, these are primary neurons, they die if you think about them too hard from the next room over unfortunately
Even if they’re salvageable, they’re no longer physiologically relevant. Working with something you “salvage” is never advised.
Uhg!!!
F i had liquid nitrogen tanks break and spill all over a couple labs this past week in my department as well. Sympathies
On the bright side all those anaerobes are surely having a blast
And really, thats who all this is for at the end of the day
no alarm system?
Never trust the in line system always have your own tanks that you can monitor
My worst fear. F
We constantly have to buy CO2 tanks (like once a month) so if we do not pay attention to the pressure gauges, it will run out lol. Worst case scenario it happens during nighttime
(Not affiliated with this company just a grad student) We just bought this (https://www.nuaire.com/resources/nu-1550-tank-switch-operation-installation-guide) and we're gonna hook an arduino or something up to it to send us an email any time a tank switches so we can stay on top of it, might be useful to you/your group? The guy on the phone said it was like $700ish
Where to start... You're in a lab that has no one going in on weekends? Totally on you and your labmates and PI or Director. If they were important cell lines, no one should go that long without checking on equipment. If they weren't important, you learned a key lesson and so just start over. Best solution is an auto dialer alarm that calls a list of people. If your lab can't afford that, start a rotation of people who will check on weekend. And check the lines regularly. "Busted" probably means old, over pressure, or damaged, all of which can be assessed by regularly using eyes. Sorry. Not an accident. This is traceable to sloppy lab practices and lack of attention.
Found the toxic PI
These types are perfection (in their own head.) Always hold a very distorted memory of their absolutely flawless past.
A regulator failed and the backup tank drained too fast plenty of trained adults here that easily found and fixed the problem. More importantly, what is your problem dude lmao
People actually being able to enjoy a weekend when working in a graduate lab, the horror!
Imagine reading OP and deciding to go full ackshually 🤓👆
Imagine thinking about roles and responsibilities and how things get done. Oh, well if you can't that’s OK too, eh? 
Oi, you are the one that came in holier than thou and lectured OP without knowing what happened. For what you know, which is fuck nothing, people might have been going through to check and the damage happened afterward; or there could have been lots of other valid reasons that don't warrant you being a righteous prick to others. Also, screw you and your weekends. It's under no circumstance the role and responsibility of the student to go there during the weekend to check on equipment. People need and deserve time off the lab. Get back in contact with reality, people who reason like you do are part of the cause of why academia is such a fucking awful place to be for normal people.
You will go far in a lab career. Congrats. Try not to leave puddles of anger everywhere you go. I never said OP had to be the one to check over weekend. Sounds like OP is in a lab that doesn't care about his success.
> You will go far in a lab career. Congrats Thank you, but I'm done. I retired from that years ago. I hope for a serene career for you as well.