Working on Bacillus testing

Hello!

I'm working at a nutritional supplement company and we work with a lot of plant powders. This has led to repetitive issues with Bacillus showing up and is possible interfering with our fermentation process as well. In order to track this, I'm looking into using selective plates to get counts of the Bacillus instead of having to send the samples off to a lab. I have two plates that I've picked, and was wondering if anyone has experience or feedback using these products. I also need a small incubator, we only have one on site and its needed for the other swabbing we do and is kept at 37C, whereas the specific Bacillus plates are requiring incubation at 30C. If anyone has recommendations for a compact incubator or any guidance on what to look for when shopping for one, I would greatly appreciate it. 

https://haccpplus.co...ry-x-bc-plates/

https://www.scigiene...ast-count-plate

My plan is to order a pack of these plates, and then get a challenge microbe of Bacillus. I will be plating 5 of each type of plate with serial dilution 1000 CFU, 100 CFU, 10 CFU, 1 CFU and DI water as a negative control. If anyone has feedback for this process I would appreciate it. I don't see the need to send these samples for duplicate testing as I will be using the challenger that already has a standardized CFU but any thoughts on this are appreciated. 

We are also looking into toxin testing for Bacillus as well, and are going to start by using an agglutination kit (https://www.thermofi...product/TD0950A). If anyone has thoughts or experience using this as well, I would appreciate any feedback or guidance!

Thank you!

We are happy with our Shel-Lab units (https://www.sheldonm...ical-incubators), but the ones we have are definitely not compact.  If you go to that website, depending on what you need, they might have one that is small enough.  They should work for the temperature range you need.

Matthew