Microscopy Thread

[EnterName]

Post #51 shows a hydroid in its medusa form (jellyfish-like).
I was fortunate enough to find a different hydroid form in my tank today. Usually it is impossible to find these things in older tanks, but since I have upgraded tanks these things pop up again.

You might have seen these white or transparent tentacles in your tank. They like to attach to reef rock and irritate corals:

(Semi-Transparent "tentacle" moving in the current)
​

Bulkreefsupply has a better image which they attribute to Reef2Reef, but I did not find the original source yet.

(The very same tentacle under a microscope)​

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Certainly not the most impressive image, but I feel like documenting different algae types is a decent idea so people can compare what they have found on their live rock. This is a piece of macro algae (Halymenia durvillei to be specific). It's a quite nice looking red macro algae that is growing in my sump. As my tank has very low nutrient levels I don't really need macro algae, but I'm keeping this one because it looks nice.

(Branched Halymenia - Halymenia durvillei - "Dragon's breath")​

I'm always a fan of this sort of documentation (even with species that the documentation already exists for); it's a lot of work, but I always appreciate when I find sites or studies with pics of a species at a few different levels of closeness: like one of the full algae; one of a single "leaf" of the algae; one of any macroscopic specific unusual features common to the species; general microscopic features; specific microscopic features, etc.