It is a non-hardening (soft-set) medium. This is deliberate for ibidi labware, where samples are usually imaged in the same chamber they were cultured in rather than being coverslipped and sealed. It means samples stay accessible, but it also means the chamber should be kept flat and sealed for storage.

Any fluorescence contributed by the medium itself raises the background floor of the image. That reduces effective dynamic range and makes weak specific signals harder to distinguish, which is particularly damaging in quantitative imaging where intensity is being measured rather than just observed.

Yes. The refractive index is matched to ibidi chamber materials, so imaging through a polymer coverslip bottom does not introduce the aberration you would get from a mismatched medium. It works equally well with the glass bottom versions.

Samples can typically be stored for weeks at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius protected from light, though fluorophore stability varies considerably between dyes. As with any mounting medium, the practical limit is set by the least photostable fluorophore in your panel rather than by the medium itself.

Use this version if you are already staining nuclei with another dye, if DAPI would conflict with a channel in your panel, or if you need control over nuclear stain concentration. Choose the DAPI version when you want mounting and nuclear counterstaining in a single step.