Microscope ID - Is all of this dinos? or something else

[jcosta98]

Hi guys,

So I took this photos of a sample of an "algae" or something like it in my reef. I already ID'ed some dinos mixed in , but wonder if this full agglomerate is all dinos or something else? It looks green out of water and really doesn't seem like dinos out of water too, but it grows on some places of the tank and creates air bubbles.

Under the scope it looks like an agglomerate of many little circles. It doesn't look like dinos to me , although there are some mixed in.

Sorry for the bad quality photos and thank you very much!

 

[DaJMasta]

That kind of material is usually a big mix of detritus and algae, but what magnifications are you using? I see some smaller cell like looking things, but much of it seems to be too big to show structure.

I think some combination of algae and scavengers is likely your answer, the pearling of small bubbles coming off it really only means that it's photosynthetic and getting a good bit of light, not that it's necessarily dinos.

 

[jcosta98]

That kind of material is usually a big mix of detritus and algae, but what magnifications are you using? I see some smaller cell like looking things, but much of it seems to be too big to show structure.

I think some combination of algae and scavengers is likely your answer, the pearling of small bubbles coming off it really only means that it's photosynthetic and getting a good bit of light, not that it's necessarily dinos.

Thanks , sorry for the pictures , it is a really bad microscope and very hard to take photos. The photos are at 250x, they are much more smaller then some dinos I had before, here is a picture at 250x with the same scope of dinos:


What I see that maybe is not very noticeable in the pictures , is that those agglomerates are little small "cells" clumped together . It grows on spots near the surface and it appears that it likes spots with low flow and high light.

So I guess it is just a mix of detritus and some algae ( it really looks like that to the naked eye too)