Green hair algae under the microscope (with photos!)

Rubymoon286 · Jan 8, 2020

I took my recent bloom over Christmas and did some SCIENCE on it!

The first one is green hair algae that we couldn't quite get an id on species, but you can see a cool diatom (the thing that looks like a pizza slice) and then Bryopsis (which has been purged from the rock it was on and dipped in hydrogen peroxide since a Ricordea was attached to the rock. ( I just dipped the rock and left a small buffer around the base of the Ricordea) Then into the coral qt tank to rest and make sure we don't have another bloom.

Sorry for the number of photos!

Chefwheredyougo · Jan 8, 2020

That's pretty cool!

Aaronreef · Jan 23, 2020

What sort of magnification is needed to identify algae ? I'm struggling with some on my sand bed and would like to be able to identify what it actually is

Rubymoon286 · Jan 23, 2020

Aaronreef said:
What sort of magnification is needed to identify algae ? I'm struggling with some on my sand bed and would like to be able to identify what it actually is

I did these at 40x and 400x the feather looking strand is at 40x and it was all I needed to see that it was Bryopsis (I googled bryopsis under the microscope and compared) Going up to 400x let me see some of the microorganisms and cells