Hi Adam O, and hi visitors! Say Adam, just for my microscopic observing pleasure, I have indoor, and outdoor aquariums with native fish/native plant assemblages. That shoal of huge bacteria, were a sample of 'the cloud of recycleing organisms surrounding a 4.0 mm dead baby minnow (a dead fry).

To make special 'microhabitats' for collecting observable protists/meiofauna/and algae, to achieve this with great results...I use a floating small styrofoam raft floating in my aquarium. Try these floating rafts...the fun is to bring indoors to your native fish/native plants aquarium..samples of algae/ protists/ meiofauna...and to litterally: stock your styrofoam rafts. One white styrofoam coffee cup can be easily cut with paper scissors into many curved-surface rafts...strands of native algae, or native water plants entwined with your areas algae. lay these specimens /drape these specimens on your curved rafts, water lapps along the curved saddle of each small raft..this is a key microhabitat in your aquarium. Time to time you can 'restock your rafts' with sample silt/ submerged strand of plants, etc. .

It really is a relaxing pleasure to have rafts from different outdoor sites, to periodically view wet-mount slides of pipett sample of each raft/ of key locales on each raft...see if themes of organism groups stabilly/repeatedly are encountered in your microscopic observing. I find favorite protists (huge green-blue Stentor ceroulius (sp?!!), smal cladoceran water fleas, etc. ), I find recurring encounters by periodically pipett sampleing the same rafts...weeks apart. And then you have seasonal changes to enjoy with your wetmount microscopy, Adam O. But aahh, those huge bacteria often turn up amidst a 'micro-carcass' being recyled...in my relaxing microscopy. charlie guevara, fingerlakes/US