Fun with plankton

["Umm, fish?"]

I just posted this over at Eric's forum, but I thought I'd post it here as well. Any thoughts are welcome! I already have heard the "Get and life!" and "Get a new microscope!" though.

Last night I was up late and a trifle feckless, so, since the tank lights were out, I pulled out the Nightsea flashlight and just used it as a strong moonlight. I do this sometimes without even using the glasses because I like to watch the blue-white dots of the plankton drift by on the current. Maybe I need to get a life, but that's a topic for another time.

I was startled out of my trance by a largish _green_ dot floating by. Not right at the surface, but a few inches below the surface. Of course, by the time I looked twice it was gone. Then I saw another (this one looked to be trailing the mucus web of some animal). At that point I ran for an eyedropper ... and caught one.

I apologize for the poor images to follow. The microscope is, unfortunately, what I have.



For a sense of scale, that's at 200x magnification and the whole photo, width-wise, is about 1mm.

So, that is an object, ciliated, surrounded by a whitish substance with brown dots that you said before were diatoms. In fact, the whitish substance very closely resembles and acts like that earlier white substance that was released by the Euphyllia.

Here's another photo with the Nightsea flashlight used as a sidelight. Note that no barrier filters were used.



With barrier filters (the glasses) the object and the white substance fluoresced green like crazy.

I mentioned that the object was ciliated, but you certainly can't see that in the photo. Here is a movie where you can see the cilia in action, especially along the bottom edge (roughly 0.5 megabytes). Note that whatever it is is able to slowly move around.

http://65.102.221.68/20070516_010714680.mov

I have a couple of longer movies if anyone would like the links, but you get the point with the smaller one.

I then transfered all of this mess to a petri dish that I could cover and that would have a little larger water volume and I put it under my better but lower-powered dissecting 'scope. No photos here though.

Under that 'scope I could no longer find the ciliated object, but there are now three oblong brown objects in similar size that I'm pretty suspicious about. I did watch the white substance as it slowly disintegrated and lost fluorescence over the course of about an hour. Very interesting. It's now just a sort of white smear on the glass, with some diatoms sprinkled about. When I first did the transfer, the white substance fluoresced so heavily that I was able to use the Nightsea flashlight as a light source and see pretty well through my highest-powered, mediocre optics even with the glasses on.

So, aside from just reporting the event, I suppose I should pose some of the myriad of questions:

1. The ever-popular, "What the heck is that thing?"

2. Was the ciliated organism eating the white substance and just along for the ride, or was there more of a connection between the white substance and the ciliated organism?

3. Not that I have any pre-conceived notions about what I saw or anything, but ... In my reading today a word keeps striking me that I'd never really noticed before. In a lot of coral reproduction articles I see phrases such as "egg-sperm bundle," "sperm bundle," and even "planula-sperm bundle." I guess I'd never really noticed the word "bundle" before. Can you explain a little more about the "bundle" bit, or point me toward some more references where I can explore more of the details?

Thank you so much for listening and any help you can provide!

[lion-clown]

I have no experiance with this but that is crazy you diffenantly have to much time but that is cool. I will be watching the thread to see what it is. Just out of curiosity do you have anything in your tank that would procreate.

[lfduty]

you diffenantly have to much time

["Umm, fish?"]

I work at home. What else should I do to fill all those long hours where everyone else sits in non-productive meetings?

Just out of curiosity do you have anything in your tank that would procreate.

Well, except for the sand and rocks.... Sorry. It doesn't look like snails or worms to me. The white stuff looks like the white stuff I found coming out of a euphyllia tentacle. Other than that, I just don't know.

[lion-clown]

Is it in your refugium or you don't have fish yet

[wantsalotta]

Andy was saying everything but the sand/rocks has reproduced....do a search for his posts and go back over the last year or so, Lion-Clown. You will find some very very interesting reading with great pics.

[lion-clown]

oh wow cool i will have to do that

["Umm, fish?"]

Thanks, Brian! But not "has" reproduced, "can" reproduce. I was just making a silly, flippant comment about animals and their sex lives. Sorry!

lion-clown--I do have fish and I guess that's a possibility. I have two anthias, but whatever it is looks too large to have come from them to me. And the Bangaii is still holding his eggs. Anyway, I don't believe that eggs have cilia like that. I think it's more likely to be a coral planula from a brooding coral or some ciliated organism along for the ride eating sperm. If that's a sexual by-product at all.

[lion-clown]

Wow you have a lot going on. Would a regular flashlight work or what makes that flashlight special? You got my curiousity going I want to try it now.

["Umm, fish?"]

I'm actually using the Nightsea flashlight. It puts out light in a fairly narrow color spectrum that excites fluorescence in corals (lots of colors, usually in the greens and reds) and plants (usually reds). It's kind of expensive, but it's made it so I can enjoy the aquarium anytime, not just when the lights are on. And the fluorescence is just gorgeous. I love it.

I've taken a few pictures of the fluorescence, but you should really check out Anthony Calfo's fluorescence photography. Amazing stuff!

http://www.nightsea.com/

By the way, Charlie Mazel is a really nice guy.

["Umm, fish?"]

Oh, and check out this page.

http://www.nightsea.com/whatfluor.htm#

[lion-clown]

Yes they are kind of expensive but those pictures are amazing! Something to add to the long list of things to get lol.

[G.SMITHII]

i still want to come over

want any sea-foam green palys?

["Umm, fish?"]

Sounds good to me. What's your schedule like? Tank lights come on at 2:00pm.

Actually, I might want some paly at that. My protopalys do some really weird stuff and I wouldn't mind experimenting with a different batch of 'em. Man, they grow like crazy, though. You almost need a tank just for them.

[lion-clown]

I'm sorry im still new to a lot of this what is "sea-foam green palys" I have never heard of them before and do you have a picture of it? Thanks


Tony

[G.SMITHII]

they're just palys that are sea foam green. i dont think they're too special or anything.

no pics, my DC sux.


fish, im usually off by 4pm.

["Umm, fish?"]

Okay. I'm going to be busy with deadlines until about mid-week. Let me see what my kiddo's schedule is around then and I'll get back to you.