MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

I'm happy to show these off, Phill; glad you and others here can appreciate them! As for DF, I'd love to do that, but I don't know how. I bought the eBay 3D printed insert set for my condenser, but I can't seem to make anything work with my assortment of objectives (mainly DIC and metallurgical). If...

Citation: "Diatoms were filtered out of the culture medium, washed 3 times in Milli-Q water, centrifuged at 4500 rpm....." 1. That protocol is fairly standard. Actually, it is quite minimal, for diatom cleaning. The reason is that their diatom stock is a culture, in which typically there are very f...

Looks like all that tinkering with the lighting has really paid off!

(How big is that stuff, anyway?)

That's the thing about plankton collection, fixing, and preservation. There are many different ways to skin this cat and sometimes they contradict one another. In my case, my entire process had to be as air-travel friendly as possible: no toxic materials, nothing flammable, and nothing too weird. Id...

In the 9 months since I've started "Doing Diatoms" I've developed a sophisticated technique for collecting, preserving, and observing diatoms based entirely on things I misread, misinterpreted, and entirely misunderstood. This has cost me, but on occasion I get lucky. Like the centric frustule poste...

So....

Continue this thread or start "Doing Diatoms Part Deux"?

Read through 17 pages of this thread.... maybe time to revive it?

My copepods under DIC also reveal some hidden details: Screenshot 2023-02-28 173150.jpg It would seem that poor initial sample collection led to bacterial contamination and subsequent consuming of nearly all organic material rendering my copepods glass-clear. I'm assuming that the visible internal s...

Not entirely clear what's going on here: Screenshot 2023-02-25 161211.jpg Eyepiece photos with phone at 200x with DIC, heavily cropped. I know, I know....pretty lousy shots. Screenshot 2023-02-25 161427.jpg . This is a strew that had been rinsed out of a plankton net with 91% isopropyl alcohol (IPA)...

I like the idea for fast-set plankton slides. What are we calling "expensive"?

Cool video!
Where did that sample come from?

Did you rinse and put that spider part in a Euparal-loaded deep cell, per your recipe?

For anyone wondering.... Those micro-incandescent lights can be replaced with a drop-in dimmable LED equivalent. I found them here: Screenshot 2023-02-20 110717.jpg The power supply running them didn't output 12v so I don't know about the 3 lumens these lights supposedly generate. They are certainly...

Dead fly soaked in 5% KOH for a couple of hours until it looked transparent - time depends on size of insect and how thick is the exoskeleton; springtails maybe 1 hr, bluebottle fly likely overnight. Thoroughly rinsed in water. Dehydrate in alcohol. Clear, using something miscible with Euparal (e.g...

I can't get my hands on anything "collectible". There always seems to be a security guard nearby eyeing me suspiciously.

Just out of curiosity, you just dropped an entire dead fly into euparal and didn't get any air bubbles? Did you use new or thinned euparal? Did you dewater the fly first? Where did you get your euparal, anyway? And how did you manage to get NO air between the cover slip and the well?

Agreed, you should sell it as a complete, functioning unit. It's really quite beautiful!

Watching this topic.... Curious to see how you work that dimmer into your LED and power supply. I've got a similar setup and I too would like to use the onboard switches and dimmer. As it is, my lighting setup is arc-welder bright; thankfully the DIC eats up most of that and, in a pinch, a couple of...

This is a cool thread, and thanks for uploading your video tests; that's a lot of work.

Sansub, are you using an inverted microscope? What's your set-up look like for those videos?

Phill Brown wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 08, 2023 9:03 pm

How is needing an electric vacuum pump for epoxy the most cost effective choice of mounting medium?

It's cost effective if you're a graduate student needing to make dozens of thin sections, at $50 each, and can't afford high-end UV curable low-viscosity epoxies.

I'd rather fix this thing than send it to a landfill: Screenshot 2023-02-08 173341.jpg Except for one, the incandescent lights still work though the overall light is relatively dim: Screenshot 2023-02-08 173430.jpg Are there directly replaceable LED bulbs that will fit this screw mount? Screenshot 2...

Why stick with epoxy if it's the root cause of the complaint? It's not ideal to have no control of viscosity either. Air bubbles are a nuisance in other mounting media as well. @ Squintsalot : search keyword "30-40cps" in the MH search window (top right of the page) will lead you to the "diatoms an...

About 3-4 years ago, a simple DIY compact vacuum chamber for slides was described on the forum. I can't remember whose idea it was (maybe Suphot ?) A little later I constructed a device based on a 50mL Falcon tube (as chamber) and a 60mL gas-tight syringe (as a makeshift pump) and manual plastic sy...

My 40 year old grad student-made thin sections, I now see, are chock full of tiny bubbles likely trapped during the epoxy mixing stage. Early (recent) attempts at plankton strews and plant stem sections fared no better. It's a problem (I think) I've solved with a de-gas chamber: I place a newly made...

My brain shuts down when I see the words "coherent light applications include...".

That's some impressive microscopy!

It's hard to photograph but these coverslip surfaces have a fine orange-peel texture to them, viewable with incident light. I'm pretty sure coverslip surfaces should be smooth as, well, glass. Right? Not only are these filthy, glazed with a fine greasy substance, but they have this bizarre texture t...

To further update.... That link is apparaently dead. I just sent Richard Gordon an email to an address that was returned as defunct. Oh well. As for your other link: I didn’t check the link, because I had already downloaded it from Wiley https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119488170...

That's a link to an email address. Gordon's name appears on a few (very) high priced publications that I've had my eye on.

I guess I'll try contacting him directly for his papers, and ask a few questions as well.

Thanks!

Looking for a book on diatom morphogenesis......can't seem to find anything less than $150.