MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Many thanks, Stenostomum unicolor looks like a very plausible match. They look like a fascinating group. I've only been aware of the macroscopic members in the past so am.intrigued to find there are lots of microscopic species too and to find out a bit more about them.

Hello folks I think this is probably a flatworm but after that rather broad description I've discovered that flatworms are a much more genera-rich lot than I'd assumed. https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51156627414_7883e61740_h.jpg jQ8LSZnU1RI Can anyone point me in the right direction. My only re...

Hi there My second mystery of the evening was this strange structure which seems to be formed largely of small green algae with larger green algae and the odd diatom in amongst them. My camera does a poor job of picking up greens (or I do a poor job of setting it up so it shows greens as they look t...

Hello folks I've been trying to look harder at algae and get on top of some of them. I found some bits today which had me totally stumped This one was within a whole clutter of algae and debris from the bottom of a sample from a little pond. I saw lots of spheroid green algae both with and without f...

I rinse my samples back into the jar or whatever with a pippette of tap water that's stood for a couple of days then clean the cover slip with a sheet of kitchen tissue between my fingers. I'm fairly vigorous. I thought it might scratch the cover slip but so far I don't think it has. Once it's clean...

I guess that's the point really - my 3mp USB camera has pretty good resolution - I just wonder whether it's missing a bit. It's fair but . . . Hence my desire to test that by comparing with a higher resolution camera. I may well be being rather optimistic and it may be that what the camera is catchi...

Are you using some method of enhancing contrast? That might make the biggest difference in perceived clarity Many thanks for your suggestions Pete I am trying pretty much everything and, on occasion, confusing myself silly and going back to basics! I have a 10 and 40x phase both of which are good f...

Not sure but I'd look more towards rotifers. I think I see the munching internal jaws which seem to typify rotifers. Maybe the genus Ptygura?

I think your 18mm field of view in the eyepiece assumes a 1X objective. So to calculate the field of view with a 5X objective you just divide 18 by 5 to get 3.6mm Worth checking with a ruler or micrometer slide but I think that was what I did with my set up and when I did measure it I found the calc...

Well that was all very interesting - thank you folks. I have a dry 60x lens (largely to avoid mess and fuss as I am almost exclusively using wet mounts of pond life) I'm not unhappy with it, was considering getting a 100x oil lens soon and now am realising that a 60 or 63x oil immersion might be as ...

Thank you - that looks spot on. arcella.nl shows just the same around 11 micron cells alongside smaller around 4 micron cells here https://www.arcella.nl/diplophrys-cell-with-small-ones/ so I suspect they are different stages of the same species. I'll look out for them in colonies as shown here http...

Hi folks Well every time I look down the scope I see something different and interesting and mind boggling - some heliozoans feeding was a highlight earlier in the week. Tonight I was looking at water collected from a bit of bark which had been laying in our little pond. There was some slime on it w...

Many thanks - that looks very plausible and is an option I'd missed with my simple key following. The key has a flagelate or non-flagelate couplet. My cells are non-motile so I followed the non-flagelate branch but Haematococcus is in the flagelate end of the key as it's often flagelate. The pitfall...

I'm trying to identify these green single cells using the Bellinger Freshwater Algae key which tries to narrow down to one of 250 common genera so obviously doesn't cover everything. The cells are in freshwater, the inner green cell diameter is 20 microns, the outer diameter of the mucilage is 23.7 ...

I'm using Das Leben Im Wassertropfen which does a pretty good job of covering a lot of groups of organisms which you might find in a water drop. It is a handbook though - a guide - but not an academic text for identifying to species. I've just ordered Freshwater Algae, Identification, enumeration an...

I'm glad you enjoyed it Howard - there is always so much new stuff to learn - I find it both exciting and somewhat daunting

That's a lovely picture. Are you using DIC or have you absolutely cracked oblique illumination?

Many thanks Bruce - that is the most amount of help in the least amount of words :-) The Stefan Luketa paper (which is what come up when you search Padaungiella) was interesting, particularly the phrase "Populations of the asexual protists are aggregations of some limited number of clones (Tikhonenk...

I've been enjoying looking at samples of moss and am amazed by the number and number of species of testate amoeba. This one is from a sample of moss which I took a month or so ago from a local ancient woodland in Northamptonshire. It seems to have at least five species of testate amoeba in the one s...

Many things are very specific about the amount of oxygen they prefer or require. Journey to the Microcosmos did a related video (https://youtu.be/H8b09C1WPQk) which might be worth a look. Some things will die for lack of oxygen but others will relish low oxygen conditions. Some people suggest lookin...

Many thanks both for your help I did post the question on the British and Irish Fungi Facebook group and had a reply a day or two ago from a chap called Brian saying "look up Saprolegnia and Oomycetes" with a link to https://plantlet.org/oomycetes-order-saprolegnia/ which proved to be helpful. They ...

Many thanks Bruce, for not only answering the question but giving a fairly in-depth explanation of your thought process. It's really useful for someone trying to learn to hear your reasoning and what to look for in a particular group. I will add the word Uroid to my vocabulary pronto :-) All the bes...

Not getting it so let's try here! Is it normal that the Flikr share link doesn't work and you have to edit down either the BBCode or Embed code to the bit between https and jpg? Seems a little cumbersome but it also seems to work! Okay - so I can just sling in the BBCode as it is or I can edit it do...

Hi There I have been enjoying identifying a fair few things (at least to a group or a genus) but there are plenty of things which still leave me baffled. In water from our little pond which has been sitting near a window for a month with a couple of crushed wheat grains to busy things up a bit I hav...

Hello there, I'm Ian from Northampton in England. I've had various (generally fairly poor to middling) microscopes over the years and have always particularly enjoyed looking at pond water. Recently I went a bit mad and bought myself a Motic BA310E - pretty much the microscope of my dreams really! I...