MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Man, that looks like thats got to hurt!

Nice images.

Thanks guys.

Aenima,

Welcome. I'm another that does astronomy and microscopy. Good to have something to do on cloudy nights or during the day.

Bill

Kurt, Thanks for chiming in. I'm so dumb that I didn't realize this was a girdle (edge on) view. Not clear to me how you ID something from this view. I would think it somewhat rare to find diatoms lying exactly edge on in a wet mount. I don't see a shoebox shape where the valves fit together in my i...

It does look the same as his. Whatever it is, they are almost surely the same thing. Thanks for the link.

Can anyone help ID this diatom? The closest I can come up with is Sellaphora, but most diatom keys seem mainly for cleaned specimens, not living.

A new algae I've found recently. This is (I believe) Zygnema sp. undergoing cell division. You can see the elongated cell wall of the central cell. I'm not sure what is going on between the two stellate chloroplasts but I assume it is some stage of mitosis. Afocal image at 250x. The filament is abou...

Yesterday I stumbled upon two testate amoebae that I haven't encountered before. They were found in some decomposed algae I collected last weekend. The first is, I believe Paulinella sp. The organism is 25 µ long. Image was taken afocal through 40x achromatic objective, 10x eyepiece. Testate_Amoeba_...

The germinating zoospore is a good guess. Doing an image search for those didn't find anything quite like what I see, but I did find some that looked like this, which is perhaps a slightly different stage of germination. Algae1.jpg In the second image of the two "eyes", each eye is about 60 microns ...

I found these non-motile algae in my pond aquarium. Looking through my freshwater algae guide I'm unable to place it. Any ideas? This is a stack of 6 taken through a 40x objective. Unknown_Algae3_Stack_5.jpg This two things sort of look like amoeba tests. Stack of 13 though 25x objective. Two_Tests_...

Kurt,

Thanks for the Cocconeis ID. I had just assumed those were part of the plant, not realizing they were another diatom species.

I'll try another image zoomed in a bit in a day or so.

Bill

After further examination, I think actinophrys is correct that there are two different species of testate amoeba in my tank. The first picture with no visible spines is different from the other with spines (which I think is Centropyxis). I got another nice image of the latter.

This is a stack of 20 images taken though a 10x achromatic objective. I believe the filamentous algae is some species of Rhizoclonium. There is also a strand of Spirogyra in the field. The Spirogyra was considerably below the plane of the Rhizoclonium and I'm impressed how the stacking brought it al...

That just doesn't look real, does it?

Pretty sure it is the same on as what I saw with spines. Here is one where a spine is visible.

I think the first question is how do things look visually through the scope? Is the illumination good there? Are you able to focus properly? If that is not right we need to deal with that first.

Could you post a link to adapter you bought? The one I found by Amscope was around $89 and had some optics in it. My guess is it is not the adapter. I started with simple direct projection from the objective into the sensor. I got reasonably good images that way. More likely you don't have you light...

This past week my pond aquarium has exploded with testate amoebae. They have multiple spikes emanating from the test leading me to think this might be Centropyxis (although the one in the picture doesn't have spikes visible. There were several pseudopods sticking out. This image shows many more due ...

Got around to looking at my bryozoans today. It looks like the colony has died. Perhaps that is why they were producing so many statoblasts. My macro set up is not really macro and is much more primitive than Kurt's. This is what the colony looked like on the side of the aquarium. The dark spots are...

Rename done.

So are all your pictures taken using a macro lens from outside the tank? Well done!

Just noticed that on the backside of my aquarium, I have something growing that looks just like Kurt's image. I even see little dark specs along the tube that must be the statoblasts. So I guess I have an active colony growing. I will try to sample some of it and get a picture or two this weekend. B...

Very cool. Thanks for the ID guys. I had not heard of these before but will watch for the adult bryozoans.

I ran across this last night in my "pond" aquarium. Anyone have a guess as to what it is? It is about 600 microns in length.

Sorry for the poor image. It was very dark and opaque. I had to significantly overexpose to see anything at all.

I went with the 700D. It seems to be working well for me.

One nice thing about having the data embedded in the image is that if you rename the image, you can still find the data.

I use a canon 650D. Yeah, the black frame is not a bad idea for marking changes in settings. I am thinking of writing a program that monitors a directory. When a new image file appears (downloaded by your tethering app) it will automatically popup a UI to edit the EXIF data by adding notes. If it de...

Arcella does look like a strong possibility. Thanks.

I guess the color on your spores was from the stain. Mine are naturally that color. They just seems so similar I figured they were similar things.

What a coincidence. Just today I ran into something that looks remarkably similar and had no idea what it was. This orange object is about 60 µ in diameter. Could it be a moss spore as well? Ive seen a number of these roundish and orangish things in my "pond" aquarium the past week or so. However al...

Thanks for all the ideas. I guess no one has found a really good way of dealing with the problem. An ideal method would be to store it in the EXIF data, or possibly in a .xmp file of the same name. I use a tethering app called Kuuvik Capture and I've written the author to see if he could add the abi...