Microscope images under a cover slip, kinda squashed:
Microscope images without cover slip (they were moving around so they're all in different orientations):
Gif attempt to show motion (Couldn't figure out how to take a proper video so I pieced it together from multiple stills, didn't turn out good):
I didn't really notice them spinning in a horizontal circle but they did twirl around the axis of their pointy ends. It reminded me of how red blood cells twirl around in videos.
Macroscopically, I typically see them as brown threads suspended in the water column or as crimson mats if their population density is high, I actually thought it might be a mix of different organisms because of this but I sampled from multiple locations and they all look identical microscopically so I think it might just be a trick of the light based on how thick their density is.
I am unsure if they enter the water column at night, but I have noticed very long threads of them suddenly appear as the lights go down even in areas I siphoned clean earlier, I assume that might be them entering the water column?
I am like 95% sure they are Ostreopsis (or a related genus) based on the images I've seen but this is my first time trying to ID dinos so I wanted secondary confirmation.


Microscope images without cover slip (they were moving around so they're all in different orientations):



Gif attempt to show motion (Couldn't figure out how to take a proper video so I pieced it together from multiple stills, didn't turn out good):
I didn't really notice them spinning in a horizontal circle but they did twirl around the axis of their pointy ends. It reminded me of how red blood cells twirl around in videos.
Macroscopically, I typically see them as brown threads suspended in the water column or as crimson mats if their population density is high, I actually thought it might be a mix of different organisms because of this but I sampled from multiple locations and they all look identical microscopically so I think it might just be a trick of the light based on how thick their density is.
I am unsure if they enter the water column at night, but I have noticed very long threads of them suddenly appear as the lights go down even in areas I siphoned clean earlier, I assume that might be them entering the water column?
I am like 95% sure they are Ostreopsis (or a related genus) based on the images I've seen but this is my first time trying to ID dinos so I wanted secondary confirmation.
