Got tired of waiting and decided to take a ride by the river. It's almost at flood stage for the spring again and I stopped by a boat ramp and dipped out a couple jars of water with some dead leaves and sediment. The very first sample on a slide got me some nice algae I had never seen before. From Ralf Wagners website, it looks like it is pediastrum duplex? And the diatom is Asterionella formosa?
Algae at last
Sounds like the start of a novel "Went To The River - Came Back With . . . . ."
NU.
student of entomology
Quote – Holmes on ‘Entomology’
” I suppose you are an entomologist ? “
” Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name.
No man can be truly called an entomologist,
sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr
The Poet at the Breakfast Table.
Nikon camera, lenses and objectives
Olympus microscope and objectives
HAHA, I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me.
I took a sample in a pipette, from the very bottom of the jar that had the dead leaves and a little bit of sedimentary stuff in the bottom. I did not get a lot of the mud when I took the samples. Maybe I should have. You can still see a lot of the fine particulates though.
The river is in flood stage now, yet the water looks fairly clean. Usually it's silt laden and brown and you can't see very far into it. Yesterday, it looked like tea and I could see the ramp going down to maybe 4 feet. I got one jar of just water and will spin down some centrifuge tubes of it to see if it has anything in it.
After I check some samples of these two jars, I'll add them to my tank to give it a charge with some new life. Still don't see any visible sized bugs in them though, like cyclops. Maybe they are dormant, the water was cold enough to numb your hands, just carrying the jars.