Pocket-Pond™ Gel is used to form the sidewalls of a well containing a drop of culture. The Gel donut is sealed between a glass slide and a plastic cover slip. Our Pocket-Pond™ Gel is a special silicone compound that passes oxygen and carbon dioxide readily, but it doesn't pass water easily, so there is very little evaporation and the cultures don't acidify quickly by carbon dioxide buildup.

Here are the key steps to making a Pocket-Pond™ Gel living culture slide:

(1) We recommend using a glass slide and a plastic cover slip. The Pocket-Pond™ Gel sticks more aggressively to the plastic than to the glass, facilitating step three, below.

(2) Take a small amount of Pocket-Pond™ Gel and roll it in your fingers to make a 3mm diameter ball, then place it in the center of a glass slide. Now center a plastic cover slip on top of the Gel ball. Take a second glass slide, center it over the cover slip and press down on the center of this upper slide with moderate and even pressure. The ball of Gel will flatten and spread into a disc. Keep pressing until the Gel is flattened out until it almost reaches the edges of the cover slip. Don't press too hard, be a little patient - this may take twenty seconds or so to do. Pressing too hard or pressing off center will break the upper glass slide.

(3) Remove the upper slide. Using the edge of a knife, a razor blade, or the edge of another plastic cover slip, quickly pry up one corner of the cover slip and flip it over. If you do this correctly the Gel will stay on the cover slip and will release easily from the glass slide. Leave the cover slip on top of the slide, with the Gel disk face up.

(4) Remove the cap from a felt-tip pen (a standard Sharpie fine point permanent marker cap works well) and use the open end of the cap as a cookie cutter to press through the center of the Gel disc, right down to the cover slip. This will leave an island of Gel in the center of the cover slip and a ring of Gel around it.

(5) Using a knife, razor, or cover slip, catch the edge of the island and peel it up from the cover slip. Return the island to the jar for future use. You now have a shallow Pocket-Pond Gel well-cavity on the cover slip.

(6) Pipette a small drop of the culture into the hole in the center of the Gel.

(7) If desired, drop a tiny bit of cotton into the Gel well to provide attachment points and barriers for your culture's inhabitants. Don't worry if some cotton fibers lie over the Gel - they will get sealed in.

(8) Take a clean glass slide (plastic will work, too) and place it over the cover slip at a 45 degree angle, touching the Gel at one edge of the cover slip and tilting the slide down onto it until it is in full contact with the Gel. Turn the assembly over and wipe off any of the culture water that escaped. The slide is done!

The culture that lasted five weeks contained paramecia and some tiny protists that collected in 'schools' of seven or eight individuals and hung around the back end of the paramecia in their 'wake'. The small protists looked like dolphins following a ship. At five weeks the paramecia were very skinny, and some had shrunk in size.