Brighteyes' Lab Notebook: Pony Mold*Update 5/31 Cleaning Results & Microscope

[daffodil101]

Nobel prize......NOBEL PRIZE!!!

   hehe.  This experiment is so cool.  Go biology!!!

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[LordBlumiere]

Gross! And also awesome! I'm definitely stoked to have come back in time to follow this, haha!

[Leave a Whisper]

  I'm grossed out. But this is fascinating.

[Clipper]

very fascinating! I would leave them for a bit longer, and you can always remove the mold and cancer by doing a hydrogen peroxide bath for a while. It would be cool to see the mold/cancer growth, and then an attempt to restore them and kill the mold.

[icecreamgirl]

Can't believe I have not seen this thread before! It is so interesting ~ I love ponies and science!

[hathorcat]

This is great! I know how you feel I would want to bust the ponies out for freedom as well...but on the other hand I would be tempted to leave them for at least a year. I think a sustained exposure is the only way you are going to see what kind of staining or damage may happen underneath.

[JazzMatazz]

I'm so grossed out by all those photos...bleh.. but yet, I can't turn away! 

Same thing that happened to me in college when we did a fun experiment. The class (I think it was an environmental science class??) got one dish, swabbed anywhere they wanted to and waited to see if there was any growth. . . Mine was the worst by far.. I swabbed the classroom's outer door handle! It looked like some kind of yeast.??

Hehe...someone was nibbling some fruit!?! That penicillin looks so cool and gross..

Oh gosh I did that too in high school. The biggest mold growth was from the door, and my glasses! Ever since then I've never bought glasses that had those nose piece things. I get a hard plastic frame with no nose pieces that I can easily keep clean!

[brighteyes]

I'm so grossed out by all those photos...bleh.. but yet, I can't turn away! 

Same thing that happened to me in college when we did a fun experiment. The class (I think it was an environmental science class??) got one dish, swabbed anywhere they wanted to and waited to see if there was any growth. . . Mine was the worst by far.. I swabbed the classroom's outer door handle! It looked like some kind of yeast.??

Hehe...someone was nibbling some fruit!?! That penicillin looks so cool and gross..

Oh gosh I did that too in high school. The biggest mold growth was from the door, and my glasses! Ever since then I've never bought glasses that had those nose piece things. I get a hard plastic frame with no nose pieces that I can easily keep clean!

We have our intro micro students do that too.  The places you'd think would be super bad, like the toilet seat are usually not the worst.  Eye glasses, the rim of re-usable water bottles, cell phones and under wedding rings are the places we've had the best luck with.  That's part of why I don't wear a wedding ring.  Normal bacteria flora aren't something to be worried about, they can actually help keep you healthy by preventing other, harmful bacteria from colonizing your skin.  But I work with so many different species of bacteria and come across student's bacteria that I'd rather not have an extra place to harbor them 

I checked on the ponies today and the mold growth is even more extensive as you'd expect.  I'm definitely seeing small dots with a perfect sphere of discoloration around them that is getting larger every time I check , but there are also lots of things that look like pindot to me and more erratic discoloration I've seen on really dirty ponies.  Only time will tell if these marks remain after the mold has been removed.  I think I'm going to take one out a few weeks before Pony fair so I can check and try a few methods of getting rid of any possible stains as Clipper suggested to evaluate their effectiveness.  I have about five ponies I've set aside to test cleaning methods as well. 

I'd like to make a small poster and set it up at my sales booth during pony fair.  I'd love to be able to communicate whatever findings I have by that time but on the other hand, this is pretty gross and I wouldn't want to freak any kids out that visit the fair so maybe not. 

[JazzMatazz]

I'm so grossed out by all those photos...bleh.. but yet, I can't turn away! 

Same thing that happened to me in college when we did a fun experiment. The class (I think it was an environmental science class??) got one dish, swabbed anywhere they wanted to and waited to see if there was any growth. . . Mine was the worst by far.. I swabbed the classroom's outer door handle! It looked like some kind of yeast.??

Hehe...someone was nibbling some fruit!?! That penicillin looks so cool and gross..

Oh gosh I did that too in high school. The biggest mold growth was from the door, and my glasses! Ever since then I've never bought glasses that had those nose piece things. I get a hard plastic frame with no nose pieces that I can easily keep clean!

We have our intro micro students do that too.  The places you'd think would be super bad, like the toilet seat are usually not the worst.  Eye glasses, the rim of re-usable water bottles, cell phones and under wedding rings are the places we've had the best luck with.  That's part of why I don't wear a wedding ring.  Normal bacteria flora aren't something to be worried about, they can actually help keep you healthy by preventing other, harmful bacteria from colonizing your skin.  But I work with so many different species of bacteria and come across student's bacteria that I'd rather not have an extra place to harbor them 

I checked on the ponies today and the mold growth is even more extensive as you'd expect.  I'm definitely seeing small dots with a perfect sphere of discoloration around them that is getting larger every time I check , but there are also lots of things that look like pindot to me and more erratic discoloration I've seen on really dirty ponies.  Only time will tell if these marks remain after the mold has been removed.  I think I'm going to take one out a few weeks before Pony fair so I can check and try a few methods of getting rid of any possible stains as Clipper suggested to evaluate their effectiveness.  I have about five ponies I've set aside to test cleaning methods as well. 

I'd like to make a small poster and set it up at my sales booth during pony fair.  I'd love to be able to communicate whatever findings I have by that time but on the other hand, this is pretty gross and I wouldn't want to freak any kids out that visit the fair so maybe not. 

I love the poster idea!! And on jewelry I agree, but then I have never really liked wearing rings at all! I'm surprised I even went through getting my ears pierced and I don't really switch them out other than clean them everyday. I have surgical steel studs.

[ghouldilocks]

Spoiler

I'm so grossed out by all those photos...bleh.. but yet, I can't turn away! 

Same thing that happened to me in college when we did a fun experiment. The class (I think it was an environmental science class??) got one dish, swabbed anywhere they wanted to and waited to see if there was any growth. . . Mine was the worst by far.. I swabbed the classroom's outer door handle! It looked like some kind of yeast.??

Hehe...someone was nibbling some fruit!?! That penicillin looks so cool and gross..

Oh gosh I did that too in high school. The biggest mold growth was from the door, and my glasses! Ever since then I've never bought glasses that had those nose piece things. I get a hard plastic frame with no nose pieces that I can easily keep clean!

We have our intro micro students do that too.  The places you'd think would be super bad, like the toilet seat are usually not the worst.  Eye glasses, the rim of re-usable water bottles, cell phones and under wedding rings are the places we've had the best luck with.  That's part of why I don't wear a wedding ring.  Normal bacteria flora aren't something to be worried about, they can actually help keep you healthy by preventing other, harmful bacteria from colonizing your skin.  But I work with so many different species of bacteria and come across student's bacteria that I'd rather not have an extra place to harbor them 

I checked on the ponies today and the mold growth is even more extensive as you'd expect.  I'm definitely seeing small dots with a perfect sphere of discoloration around them that is getting larger every time I check , but there are also lots of things that look like pindot to me and more erratic discoloration I've seen on really dirty ponies.  Only time will tell if these marks remain after the mold has been removed.  I think I'm going to take one out a few weeks before Pony fair so I can check and try a few methods of getting rid of any possible stains as Clipper suggested to evaluate their effectiveness.  I have about five ponies I've set aside to test cleaning methods as well. 

I'd like to make a small poster and set it up at my sales booth during pony fair.  I'd love to be able to communicate whatever findings I have by that time but on the other hand, this is pretty gross and I wouldn't want to freak any kids out that visit the fair so maybe not.

You should! I love poster presentations, lol 

[rosierjay]

you could always make a little print out like a folded flyer, with your finding so people can be aware of proper pony care and aware of problem environments. etc.

[Rachel8125]

What a brilliant idea! Good luck!!

[STLGusty]

Maybe if you didn't want to have a booth with a poster, perhaps you would be able to do a panel to walk everyone through what you did, show pictures, the actual ponies, etc.?  I'm not sure if that's something you would be interested in, but it could be an alternative possibility perhaps!  

Awesome work, by the way...I love reading the updates!

[brighteyes]

Maybe if you didn't want to have a booth with a poster, perhaps you would be able to do a panel to walk everyone through what you did, show pictures, the actual ponies, etc.?  I'm not sure if that's something you would be interested in, but it could be an alternative possibility perhaps!  

Awesome work, by the way...I love reading the updates!

That would be really awesome and I would totally be down for it if the opportunity arose!  I wonder if there would be enough interest though? 

At least we have some interesting results thus far.  Our results indicate:

1) Ponies can support mold growth
2) Oxyclean & boiling water may be partially effective at killing mold but it does not prevent future growth if the ponies are exposed at a later date.  Our control does have a very very slight mold growth indicating that either not all the mold was killed or she was re-exposed between being cleaned and put in the sterile jar.  She has muuuuuuch less mold than I would expect given her initial swab results so it could be that most of the mold was killed off in the oxyclean/boiling water treatment.  I'm going to put a really gross pony which is uncleaned in a sterile jar with sterile water and see if we get growth to compare.

I've also been testing UV light effectiveness on fading pen marks on a Pretty Vision.  So far, there was only a slight lightening of the mark after 5 hours of continuous UV germicidal lamp exposure, however an unintentional side effect of this was to induce plasticizer breakdown and leakage as the area exposed to the light became sticky after the five hours. 

Here is an animated gif showing the change (or rather lack there of) in the mark over five hours:

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I had planned to try another five hours next week but I'm not sure if I will given the plasticizer breakdown.  I will try with a more common pony instead.

[brighteyes]

See first post for update!  We've got some crazy mold going on!