Plates and slants

Ok, newbie rancher question. I have a bank of 5 or so strains that live on agar plates. When I want to brew, I grab a happy looking colony and grow it up. I have never made or used slants. So the question is: what is the difference in using slants vs plates in a yeast bank?

Not an expert myself, but it is something I am reading more about because I want to get into it. As I understand it, plates are for essentially isolating healthy colonies. You inoculate the plate with a loop that you've dipped into a new yeast tube or commercial bottle of beer, etc. The large surface area allows you to pick a nice healthy and isolated yeast colony as a starting point, ensuring you only end up growing one thing (one strain of yeast and now bacteria or mold). But its purpose is only that.

Once you have a nice looking, round white yeast colony sitting by itself on a plate, you grow that onto a slant - and the slant is what you take from when you want to make a starter.

Right?

Size

Sorry I like one word answers.... now for the thousand word answer.

I used slants simply as you can store lots of yeast is a small space. Also they are less like to dry out as it has a cap. I dip mine in wax after innoulating the slant to ensure that it is air tight.

I now only use slants for longer term storage, I use baby food jars (slanted also) to make a larger amount of yeast. Also the large opening allows me to easily pour in wort to the slant, shake and let is do its first stage of propagation in the jar. This way instead of inoculating the first step with a few thousand cells I probably have a few million. When I run out of baby food jars I start over from a slant that is stored in the back of the fridge.

Clem