Heike,

I used to use Mayer's for my IHC as it doesn't have alcohol in it.  In  my
experience, I found that it doesn't blue very well.  I woudln't use Lithium
carbonate with this... it does seem to facilitate a precipitate.  Use ammonia
water (ammonia diluted 1:1000 in DI water).

I switched to a nonalcoholic Harris' formula which makes a nice deep
purple/blue nuclei where the nuclei stained with Mayer's are fainter and
kinda brownish.
I prefer Gill's or Harris' formulas.

Connie McManus



Heike Grabsch wrote:

> I am a learning-by-doing-histotechnologist (I am a resident (medical
> doctor) in pathology and now have to do my research work by myself,
> because my technician is pregnant)and I need some advice:
>
> what can I use instead of hot running tap water for blueing the tissue
> sections after Mayer's hematoxylin? Our hot tap water is really ugly
> brown and it takes "hours" until it is clean.
> Today I tried 0.5% lithium carbonate for 30 sec. The colour is very nice,
> however I have got a lot of "arbored" precipitates (like small trees, if
> you understand what I mean) on top of the tissue, I washed and washed
> with buffer, with dist. water, with dist. water and Triton X, but I could
> not get rid of this precipitates. What is the problem with lithium
> carbonate as a blueing solution? Or may be it is the concentration?
> Any suggestions what to use instead?
>
> thank you for your help,
>
> Dr. Heike Grabsch
> Dept of Pathology
> University of Duesseldorf
> Germany