hyperfixation-floodgate - Tumblr blog

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A delightfully chubby Least Killifish female and a very cute "dalmatian" melanistic Mosquitofish male, both caught with a net in the retention pond at work.

I love seeing the melanistic ones--they look like little fancy guppies in the middle of the pond. I find maybe 1 for every 200 regular fish.

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New amphipod behavior observed today. In the scientific world I think they call this scaring the beejeezus out of each other

[video id: A small, shrimp-like amphipod stumbles into another of its kind before both flail wildly and swim away in opposite directions]

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What kind of creatures reside in the murky, mucky storm water retention pond at my work?

One of the world's smallest! The Least Killifish is the smallest live-bearing fish in the world! They live alongside a zillion Eastern Mosquitofish and possibly some other species I haven't caught yet to identify.

A bunch of softies! I see softshell turtles a lot, butI haven't looked up what species they are yet.

Giant, hella invasive fish! (Plecostomas added a while ago to control algae. They do not) Thankfully, the pond does not directly output to any other bodies of water, even if it floods, and it has a fish fry control grate on the overflow outlet for the grass carp that were recently added.

Gators!! Mainly small ones, safely growing bigger away from the adults. I see them basking or floating almost every day. I stumbled on this guy napping while I took a walk.

I recently got up enough courage to offer to help take care of the pond, which has an immensely thick layer of muck on the bottom and so little oxygen that the fish hang out in a few shallow channels most of the time.

To my surprise, management happily agreed and is giving me everything I requested to take care of it, including a nice aerator and hundreds of dollars of beneficial bacteria tablets. Even my suggestions to change the landscaping routine and plant native pond plants were enthusiastically accepted.

After being fired from a well paying job because I dared to ask for (completely free, barely visible) disability accommodations, this event is mind blowing to me.

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Artist's rendition of what I saw in the aquarium when I went by to get a snack last night:

(The piglet Molly was rescued immediately)

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THAT'S FOR THE ASSASSIN SNAILS YOU HEATHENS

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I have FINALLY IDENTIFIED THEM and they are NOT FANWORMS lmao

They're Bryozoans!!

Source: Flickr

Source: Gerd Guenther

Had no idea these creatures existed until I looked at a weird leaf with a cheap microscope, but how cool!! They're very common actually, and i see tons on the plants in the lake. Neat little guys.

I'll think I have a pretty good expansive knowledge of zoology and then I'll put a funny looking piece of aquatic grass under a microscope and wait that doesn't look like algae, those are....

????

FANWORMS?? THE FLUFFY THINGS THAT LIVE IN TUBES ON CORAL REEFS AND HYDROTHERMAL VENTS? THEY'RE IN THE LAKE DOWN THE ROAD?

Of the 10,000+ species of polycheates, only like 168 of them live in freshwater and only a fraction of those are fanworms, and ur telling me I found some of these guys with my $30 microscope from Amazon?

There's so little about them I can't even find a picture of what I have, much less ID it, without heading into some scientific publishing.

[Video id: Microscope video of clear creature in a translucent red tube on a plant, with multiple tentacles waving outside the tube like a fan. It retracts into the tube instantly as it's spooked, then slowly emerges into a fan again.]

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Glubby in front of my house

(Florida Leatherleaf Slug)

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I'll think I have a pretty good expansive knowledge of zoology and then I'll put a funny looking piece of aquatic grass under a microscope and wait that doesn't look like algae, those are....

????

FANWORMS?? THE FLUFFY THINGS THAT LIVE IN TUBES ON CORAL REEFS AND HYDROTHERMAL VENTS? THEY'RE IN THE LAKE DOWN THE ROAD?

Of the 10,000+ species of polycheates, only like 168 of them live in freshwater and only a fraction of those are fanworms, and ur telling me I found some of these guys with my $30 microscope from Amazon?

There's so little about them I can't even find a picture of what I have, much less ID it, without heading into some scientific publishing.

[Video id: Microscope video of clear creature in a translucent red tube on a plant, with multiple tentacles waving outside the tube like a fan. It retracts into the tube instantly as it's spooked, then slowly emerges into a fan again.]

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12:13 a.m. and I am hunched over a digital microscope on my bed watching a copepod breathe

[Video id: Microscope video of a copepod with the translucent inner workings visible, slowly pulsing. It zooms away after a few moments.]

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My son... He is very handsome

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Gave my pet dust specks a piece of cucumber for the first time and I think they like it.

I have no idea if there are multiple species of ostracod in there or if some are just juveniles? I see little brownish ones and big green ones. Maybe I'll get the microscope out to attempt identifying them sometime.

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Little snowballs

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Jean Jacket was out and about and very lengthy (sometimes)

[video id: A small translucent leech in a jar, stretching to a long skinny thread and then scrunching to a ball as it moves]

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Squidging around hours

I saw a tiny thing moving in a water sample and had to see what it was. It was a daphnia!

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The tiny jararrium has been upgraded! The residents are now in a setup that actually has soil in the bottom more like the Walstad method, and I can't wait for the guppy grass and hornwort to fill out.

A circle of salvinia minima around a feeding ring let it have both floating plants and light from above through the clear lid. The move covered everything in brown algae debris, but the inhabitants cleaned it up pretty quick! And there are BABIES

I've counted at least 7 different species in there just that I can see without a microscope, which is amazing to me. They all came from a sample of nearby gunky lake water.

[video id: Inside a planted jar aquarium, a tiny shrimp creature crawls on a plant and then swims off in a jittery, flailing way.]

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Duckweed

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Came back from vacation and stared at my living snowglobe for a while

[Video id: An aquarium in a small jar, filled with delicate plants and tiny crustaceans, seed-shaped ostracods and shrimp-like amphipods, which swim around busily.]