Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Plankton - what is in your pond food chain

http://www.melevsreef.com/phytoplankton.html

Very often what grows in jar monocultures does not do well in the natural pond habitats due primarily to widely different conditions. Jar cultures are mostly beneficial for feeding zooplankton cultures.

Because I tried it 3 times under ideal conditions and it did not work. This was confirmed IMO by Bill's testing the water. I looked at it first for 2 years and with no results as far as I could tell I asked Bill to look.

Seeding may work somewhere else but I had no luck.

Bill, it makes sense that species that would do well in a jar wouldn't do well in a pond. In an isolated pond, how do the species find it home?

Nature is VERY inovative in transferring species, especially tiny ones such as bacteria and algae. Species distribution, location and movement are a science. Many of the hundreds of thousands of algae species are specialists favoring or only growing in unique conditions be it eutrophic, mesotrophic or oligotrophic with wide differences in each category. Many are generalists 'doing' well, or rampant or just surviving in a wide range of conditions (pH, hardness, macro and micro nutrients in conjunction with external influences). Add competition factors into the mix and it becomes quite complex.

The magic of plankton - that is why this thread was started. No better source for info on this than Bill.

ewest:

Do you have water quality test results for each of the 3 ponds? If so, and you find the time, could you post them? I'm interested to see if the water quality parameters were part of the reason why you couldn't get a green bloom going in Mur Pond 3.

I have old soil test info that indicates no nutrient or other problems other than needing lime - which it gets. All other factors are in the normal range. The brown pond is more productive than the others even with no green as per the plankton analysis by Bill and growth rates on fish. Greg ran some water parameters and they were ok (better than what mine showed).

Thanks.

As I recall and without looking at the data, the brownish pond (Mu Pond3), had a bloom when I analyzed the phytoplankton. The bloom was comprised of species with darker colored chlorophyll and pigments rather than those species with brigher green hues. There is probably a unique micro nutrient and/or dissolved substance combination in this pond that favors the browner, darker colored species of algae. I analyzed water from one of Ray Scott's ponds that had water chemistry that produced a bloom with a reddish hue.

It's so funny that this thread came up, I was about to post a question regarding taking pictures on a microscope. Since it's related to this topic I'll ask it here or a mod can edit and move it for me.

I've been looking for something to capture pictures on my microscope that's relatively inexpensive but I want something with enough quality to identify microscopic cells or organisms or look at fish scales for aging.

I found these and I can't decide which to get:

I like this one because the software is capable of measuring, has a scale ruler ($77.99):
http://www.microscopenet.com/electronic-...to7sh3ap61g79f0

SkyLight: This one just snaps a picture of the field of view through one of the microscope eyepieces with a smartphone, might be capable of taking a video (I have to find out), it's a camera stabilizer ($65):
http://www.skylightscope.com/purchase/product/skylight/

Comparison study of a SkyLight/iPhone 4s and Olympus DP70:
http://www.jascyto.org/article/S2213-2945(12)00269-4/fulltext
(might have to copy and paste this in your browser)

And this one is cheap ($34.70):
http://www.amazon.com/Celestron-Digital-Microscope-Imager-44421/dp/B003DVP7CE

I like the simplicity of the stabilizer for my iPhone, no computer connection needed, probably good enough for my purpose, pictures can be easily enlarged and my pictures will be portable instead of printing them but, will I miss the ability to measure? Keep in mind that I will have to look up plankton to identify them because this isn't a field that I know much about. There has been another occasion when I was trying to identify a parasite where I wished I had a way to measure. Also, the software included with the USB camera is only good for PC's, if I ever get a MAC I will only be able to live preview and capture images.

Bill, or anybody else with knowledge, can you help me decide or suggest something else?

My dad got my little guy a microscope from Orion (same guys that make telescopes) rather than an eyepiece, it has a digital back. Takes pretty good videos and images. It is a surprisingly affordable and decent outfit! History: My dad was a professional microscopist at Kodak as part of his chemistry career.

Only problem is it's highest level of magnification is pretty close to the slide, so you really need some thin slices to view them properly.

I will see if I can post some images I took for examples.

Microscope

Much much better than expected. Of course I have played with it far more than my son has.

-Mark

The microscopenet and Celestron Digital Microscope Imager units appear to only capture video & transfer it to a screen and not take digital pictures. Probably okay if that is what you want.
Skylight holds your cell phone. Have you tried to just put your phone up to the eye piece and snap a picture? A professor at a local small college told me her students were doing that (hold phone to the eyepiece) to get some OK pictures using the microscope.

Measuring objects and putting the measurement on a picture: To apply measurements to a picture you will need to first calibrate an ocular micrometer in your eyepiece then use that calibration for the camera unit that 'stamps' the measurement onto the picture. You to need to know a length of something at the magnification that you are using to transpose that measurement to a photograph. Do you have a micrometer in your microscope ocular? Then you will also need to have a standard unit stage micrometer to calibrate your ocular micrometer - do you have one of those? Without those things measurements on the picture will not be accurate.

Some snaps from my son's microscope:

Most were taken before I realized I needed a diffuser on the aperture, so there are abundant halos. Looks much better with the diffuser, but my SD card kicked the bucket after being toted around the house.

Microscope Album

Nice pics !