Green water notes

[Thomas Barr <tcbiii at earthlink_net>]

I bloomed my 20 gallon with a jobes and took a gallon of the richest pea
soup I could make.
I took this and centrifuged some and let some settle and another was placed
in the dark.

I am going to put the light and dark treated GW on a stub and put under the
electron microscope. I needed to concentrate them to get a good view.

I got a first decent look at them today. Kidney shaped green highly motile
cells very fast. Likely a single chloroplast. Picoplankton, around 2-3
microns across.

The settled and the darkened GW both had formed a musilage around other
cells, sort of like their own little protective environment. Many algae to
do this for protection and in times of stress of inactivity/resting stages.
If one or more cells die from lack of nutrients etc, their contents will be
assimilated by the others in the colony. Some cells will hopefully make it
though this way and it may also reduce herbivory by Daphnia etc, by plugging
up the Daphnia's filter feeding setae (hairy little grabbers) and the
musilage prevents effective feeding and they also tend to stink out of
solution where the Daphnia cannot get at them.

There's no way to tell without going beyond a light microscope what species
it is. So that's next time.

They are very small but complex.

Regards, 
Tom Barr