Yet more from the Haematococcus culture jar

[Crater Eddie]

Every time I look at a sample from the Haemotococcus culture jar I see things that I just have to take photos of. I'm not sure what the colorless blobs intermingled with the Haematococcus here are.
These are all taken with the stock 40x objective.






I almost always see one or more of these spiky fellows. They don't zip around like ciliates, they glide very slowly.






I have never seen this one (center) before.

[gekko]

Wow! You are really successful in Haematococcus farming! Wonderful. Nice images too. I don't know what the spiky fellow is, but the green desmid in the middle of the last photo may be Cosmarium.

[rnabholz]

That red is just crazy! Very cool images and critters.

[Crater Eddie]

Thanks for the comments!

This culture bottle is a constant wonder to me. It never ceases to provide hours of entertainment whenever I take a sample. I have noticed that the critter population is shifting ever so slowly. At first there was almost no green to be seen in there anywhere, now it is slowly on the rise. I keep saying that I need to start a new bottle before the population in this one collapses, I think it's time.

I was struggling with the focus on these photos... I recently traded out my very old crt monitor for a newer but still old flat screen monitor figuring it would be more clear and crisp, in addition to taking up much less room on the desk. Bad move! While it is much more compact, the screen resolution is poor compared to the crt making critical focusing difficult. I need to upgrade my work room computer. I'm still running Windows XP.
CE

[vasselle]

Bonjour
Très belles séries images
Cordialement seb

[charlie g]

The red pigment is a very good antioxident nutrient which your hardy protist: Haematococcus pluvialis makes. Everything including pink flamingo birds, pink fleshy salmon fish, pink fleshy shrimp..and we humans ingest this protist made pigment! They have huge open air culture tanks in Hawaii (I think in Hawii)..where they commercially grow/culture your Haematoccus, Crater Eddie. The pigment is called astazanthine.

Your protists use it as an internal 'sun screen protection'. They can move the location of this pgment around in their cytoplasm...often to just shield their nucleus fron sunlight, so in this configuration you observe the granny-apple green flagelate...with the apple red central region..lovely colors.

I have a terra cotta bird bath in a back garden where this hardy protist took up residence a few years ago. The bird bath shattered from ice fracture before I got to drain that bath...I saved a few chunks of that bath,,the bright red resting phase will emerge when in spring I put up a new bird bath.

It's good to see your cultures are holding up...after a while..I sort of convert so much of my home into balanced aquatic communities...with a minds eye to microscopy.

One day, Eddie, set up a wynegradskie (?sp?) flask...I have one on my microscope bench which has been going for years...a tiny balanced wetlands, with specific habitats where microscopy is waiting for all. all the best, charlie guevara

[75RR]

Great brew you got going there Eddie!

Link to Sergei Winogradsky poster: Download link is on the right of the page. Fun poster.

http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/post ... ion-bottle

[Crater Eddie]

Thanks for the link! In addition to the poster, there are also instructions for making Winogradsky columns. Very interesting, and some good ideas there.

[Crater Eddie]

Thanks for that information Charlie. I am curious about your flask... do you ever have to add any sort of nutrients to it, or manage it in any other way?

[einman]

The spiky creature could be a Heliozoon. Difficult to tell what genus. So I will throw several out to start conversation:

Heterophyrs
possibly Acanthocystis or Oxnerella.

With some closer observation we could possibly key it to genus.

[Crater Eddie]

Hmmm... you could be right. He is radially symmetrical, mostly. I see them quite often in samples from this bottle, I'll try to get some more photos.