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Thanks for all the comments!

A large ciliate Prorodon niveus eats and expels waste. Obj.20x.

Thanks everyone for commenting!

This was the 1st time I saw this ciliate called Trachelophyllum. There were plenty of them in the sample. It's very interesting that they prefer to bite bigger ciliates and eat parts of them. I observed them biting like a dozen ciliates Stylonichia. Though, they eat a whole prey if it's small enough...

Nice video! Cute tardigrade

once every few weeks I toss in some salad greens or other organic mater; tuber skins, house plant trimmings, etc. Does cause a lot of bacteria to grow so caution is necessary when handling the jar.. Thanks, JimT. I guess organic matter should be added in very little quantities to prevent water goin...

Maybe someone knows how to keep a diversity of protists for a long time in a jar? It's getting cold in Russia, and soon it will be freezing. For 6 months at least! It is very dissapointing for me. So I've made stocks of pond water from different ponds. There is no free place left on my all 3 windows...

Amazing video!

Wow! They are just incredible

Very interesting observation and excellent video quality!
So rare moment you catched!

JimT wrote:Microbia, yes very good video. I can not find a definitive reference to the size of Spathidium but must be large.

Thank you. Yes, this ciliate is quite large. I used 20x objective here. And there were much larger ciliates of this spicie in the sample.

Outstanding! You have captured some HUGE meals in your videos and this is one of the best. I don't think I've ever seen the ciliate that did the eating. Was your sample from a local pond? Thank you! This sample is from the pond of the newly opened park in the center of Moscow just near the Red Squa...

Thank you all for watching and comments!
Btw I was told that it could be Spathidium sp

it looks like Homalozoon and it eats like Homalozoon, but it is oval shaped and it doesn't have a granular mass near the mouth..

I watched Amphileptus for hours and haven't seen it eat anything. I really enjoyed your video as it is the first time I see the way it eats. Thanks.

Оh my God, I did not know that Lacrymaria could bite off a piece of a big ciliate . Excellent catch!

Thank you a lot, Bruce, for your detailed explanation! Now it became much clearer for me. Yes, I read this article by Hiller & Bardele by the link you kindly placed below your video "Voracious ciliates (Holophrya)". It was very interesting to know about a life cycle of these critters. I wish I knew ...

vasselle wrote:Bonjour
Très belle vidéo
Merci pour le partage
Cordialement seb

Merci!

I use DSLR camera Canon eos 700D.

Nicely done, Microbia! :D At first it looked like the big one had a huge advantage with the smaller ones unable to push it aside. But then it turns out that the smaller ones, being small enough to get inside the dead rotifer, get far more food than the big one. A nice illustration of how what looks...

Francisco wrote:Very nice video.
The big ciliate is, I think, Prorodon. Cilidos very "scavengers"

Thanks. I've read that Prorodon is the same as Holophrya. Now I'm confused..

Hola Francisco. I like your videos. They are very beautiful and I find them very helpful when I try to identify little creatures.

Thank you all.
I'm wondering if all three ciliates are of the same species of Holophrya or the large one is different from the small ones...

zzffnn wrote:Great video and good choice of not cutting the video short.

Did you use plain brightfield or a slight oblique?

Thank you for sharing!

Thanks. Yes, this is plain brightfield.

These are three Holophrya ciliates eating dead rotifer. The video is quite long but I've decided not to cut it. I increased video speed by 4 times.

Cool video

So beautiful image and euglenas

Very interesting video!

Nice video! Thanks for sharing. It seems that Lacrymaria loses head quite often (I've seen such incidents twice myself). So it's not suprising that it evolved the ability to regenerate a new head.

Congratulations on capturing so interesting event!