Nice microscopy. Since you brought up the similarity between cellulose and starch, I’ll share my favorite factoid.
Cellulose is also extremely similar to chitin, the polysaccharide that makes up the tough “skin” of not just every arthropod, but also all fungus! The difference between the two molecules is the replacement of a hydroxyl group on cellulose with an acetamide group in chitin, just a few atoms swapped out. That’s why you’ll sometimes hear people say that mushrooms are more closely related to animals than plants.
this is so cool!! i work in bio research and always think about testing samples at work. did you buy the microscope or bring in a sample? so cool! thanks for sharing!
Hair algae is hard. Iirc of the shrimps amano and short nose algae shrimp (caridina longirostris) will eat hair algae, but I know from experience amanos don’t prefer it. I don’t even think otos touch hair algae, people will use Siamese algae eaters.
Here I am why my API test kit feeling like a scientist every time I make the water in the tube go colorful, and you come with this post…. Awesome info and I hope you make more posts like this!
The organism on the last slide is likely a Rotifer, rather than an amoeba. You can see the charictaristic red eyespot and they tend to have an orangeish coloration around the “stomach” area, but I’d have to see a photo centered on it to tell exactly.
If you ever see microorganisms that you’d like identified, I suggest crossposting over to r/microscopy! I’m a mod over there and we love to help people ID organisms.
Hemicellulose is more common than cellulose in some types of algae so not sure if this is cellulose or hemicellulose in the hair algae. Hemicellulase and Xylanase in BacterAE help with “digesting” hemicellulose which might make this more accessible/appealing to shrimp.
Either way, this is likely one of the reasons BacterAE works so well in shrimp tanks – makes the food more accessible to shrimp/shrimplets.
Some products like Microbe-Lift Autumn, specifically have cellulase but it’s used for ponds and has cold water bacteria. I wonder if adding a bit of that to aquarium would help make string algae edible for *all shrimp*.
Great info!!! Love the pics. I unfortunately have some hair algae growing on my java moss mat. Now, I need to figure out how to get rid of the hair algae.
Beautiful images-
You bought yourself a very good microscope!
The brown vs green algae- these are different species?
TIL -they are eukaryotic algae!
-(i assumed they were Cyanobacteria- or at least bacterial -since they seemed similar in width to the Cyanobacteria that form strands. )
TripResponsibly1 
This is very neat, more of this please 😌
Nice microscopy. Since you brought up the similarity between cellulose and starch, I’ll share my favorite factoid.
Cellulose is also extremely similar to chitin, the polysaccharide that makes up the tough “skin” of not just every arthropod, but also all fungus! The difference between the two molecules is the replacement of a hydroxyl group on cellulose with an acetamide group in chitin, just a few atoms swapped out. That’s why you’ll sometimes hear people say that mushrooms are more closely related to animals than plants.
this is so cool!! i work in bio research and always think about testing samples at work. did you buy the microscope or bring in a sample? so cool! thanks for sharing!
Hair algae is hard. Iirc of the shrimps amano and short nose algae shrimp (caridina longirostris) will eat hair algae, but I know from experience amanos don’t prefer it. I don’t even think otos touch hair algae, people will use Siamese algae eaters.
great post! I love how science-y the shrimp community is 🙂
Here I am why my API test kit feeling like a scientist every time I make the water in the tube go colorful, and you come with this post…. Awesome info and I hope you make more posts like this!
The organism on the last slide is likely a Rotifer, rather than an amoeba. You can see the charictaristic red eyespot and they tend to have an orangeish coloration around the “stomach” area, but I’d have to see a photo centered on it to tell exactly.
If you ever see microorganisms that you’d like identified, I suggest crossposting over to r/microscopy! I’m a mod over there and we love to help people ID organisms.
Mine don’t touch it either and I’ve always wondered why! So cool.
Blanche it and give it back to them?
As a bio nerd and former biology student- I love this!! Thanks for sharing your knowledge 🙂
This is what we need more of in this sub! I’m all ears (eyes 😂)
this is fascinating, thanks for sharing. I’d love to see more too.
Hemicellulose is more common than cellulose in some types of algae so not sure if this is cellulose or hemicellulose in the hair algae. Hemicellulase and Xylanase in BacterAE help with “digesting” hemicellulose which might make this more accessible/appealing to shrimp.
Either way, this is likely one of the reasons BacterAE works so well in shrimp tanks – makes the food more accessible to shrimp/shrimplets.
Some products like Microbe-Lift Autumn, specifically have cellulase but it’s used for ponds and has cold water bacteria. I wonder if adding a bit of that to aquarium would help make string algae edible for *all shrimp*.
Great info!!! Love the pics. I unfortunately have some hair algae growing on my java moss mat. Now, I need to figure out how to get rid of the hair algae.
Beautiful images-
You bought yourself a very good microscope!
The brown vs green algae- these are different species?
TIL -they are eukaryotic algae!
-(i assumed they were Cyanobacteria- or at least bacterial -since they seemed similar in width to the Cyanobacteria that form strands. )
By the amoeba, do you mean the clear thing on the right in the last photo? Did you see it moving pseudopodia around?
Do you feed them? They probably prefer food over algae