Slide Staining Correction

We continued to work on stains and counter stains in lab tonight. I am proud to report that all my slides turned out nicely. However I need to correct the things I said about inks. I had orignially stated that inks had either a positive or a negative ion, in actuality the inks that we use for staining have both a positive ion and a negative ion. In acidic stains the color is in the negative ion and in basic stains the color is in the positive ion. So, when staining a slide of bacteria, which has a slightly negative charge, a basic stain would be used. And with a positivly charged organism the acid stains.