Quote:
Originally Posted by Zoaelite
I've always wanted one to try and identify the culprit responsible for mystery zoa melting. Adam I might give you a call one of these days to stop by and power up that bad boy.
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Alright, I checked with the UofC and they don't have any surplus scopes available for sale at the moment, the bio department just cleared all their old stuff out a couple of months ago. I just placed the order for the microscope I linked to earlier. I'm headed to the US on Friday until the end of the month, so it should be waiting for me when I get home.
I'm crossing my fingers that I'm going to come home to a tank that's magically fixed it's own brown slime problem, but now that I'll be able to look at it under a scope, I'm also sort of hoping it's still there. Someone came by to buy a pump off me last night and they think what I have is diatoms, which might make sense considering that this started both after my R/O membrane melted down and I started adding fish, but none of my snails will eat them, not even my mexican turbos, and they eat everything.
Levi, you are more than welcome to come by and use it. This scope comes with a USB camera so we should be able to take pictures of anything we can't ID ourselves and send them to experts if that's what needs to happen. If the USB camera ends up being useful, I'll probably upgrade to the higher rez model. Also it will give ma chance to buy some frags from you, I've recently been bitten by the zoa bug, and I need more.
I've also been toying with the idea of setting up my own mini C. irrritans study, I read all the published work on it, and the protocol for getting enough of it to study isn't that complicated, and could be easily accomplished with the equipment I already have. The other first order of business once I get this thing is going to be to start testing the bacterial cultures you can buy for your tank, such as Zeobak, Stability, etc. I've read in more than a few places that unless a bacterial culture is refrigerated, they're basically going to be dead by the time you get them. I've always been really curious to see if there is actually anything living in those very expensive supplements, and how long they stay alive in their bottles after you buy them.
Anyway, one way or another I'm going to get a correct ID one what it is that I'm dealing with.