Help.....FRESHWATER PROTOZOA

[sciencezone]

Is it possible to see freshwater protozoa growth with manifying glass after only 14 days or do I need a microscope?

[ScienceExpert123]

Dear sciencezone,

Thank you for contacting science buddies' ask an expert. Reguarding your question, you do need to use a microscope to see protozoa growth in freshwater. I do want to remind you that you should wear latex (if you are not allergic to latex), vinyl, or nitril gloves while handling the protozoa because certain protozoa are harmful to humans. Also, freshwater, especially from a pond, lake, or other body of water, which has been sitting for 14 days might be home to harmful protozoa, bacteria, and viruses, so I advise you to wear gloves and to be careful when you come in contact with the water. Also, when you use a light microscope you will want to put a drop of the water on a microscope slide and put a coverslip on top of the sample (if you want to save the slides for later you can buy coverslip glue and glue the coverslip onto the slide (If you do this be careful to not add the glue to the samples)).

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/index.h ... tozoa.html
This is a link to a website that shows pictures of freshwater protozoa, which you may want to use when classifying and identifying the protozoa that you see.

good luck,
scienceexpert123

[sciencezone]

Thanks so much. This is very helpful information. My confusion lies in the experiment steps which say:

6. Examine the surfaces of your ladder with a magnifying
glass. Your microbes may look like green, brown,
red, or pink spots. Rate the amount of growth on each
rung on a scale of 1 to 5. Give the control a rating of 3.
7. Rungs with more growth should be rated 4, while
those with much more growth should be rated 7. Rungs
with less growth should be rated 2, and those with much
less growth should be rated 1. Construct a bar graph that
compares the data. The type of surface coating should be
entered on the horizontal axis, and the growth rating
should be entered on the vertical axis.

Are microbes visible with magnifying glass?

[ScienceExpert123]

Dear sciencezone,
I think that protists are visible with a microscope if they form a colony, but you won't be able to see the individual protist cells. Also, it depends on the magnification of the magnifying glass and the type of protist; for example, euglena, a protist, contain chloroplasts, which are green, and may be able to see with a magnifying glass. Although, you won't be able to classify the protists with a magnifying glass, but you will with a microscope. Also, when you see green things in the water, usually this is algae, which is not a protist, but is a prokaryotic cyanobacteria (this is very different from protists) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prokaryote , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria). To accurately analyze the amount of protists in the water you can prepare a microscope slide of each sample (like I explained in my previous post); then you can manually count the amount of protist cells you see under the microscope and can make a ratio of the number of protist cells per field of view (the field of view of a microscope is the area of the circle that you see when you look into the microscope) (to calculate the field of view of your microscope go to http://www.lmpc.edu.au/resources/Scienc ... m#calc_FOV
and click "calculating the field of view" on the top right corner of the web page.

also, i am not exactly sure when you wrote "ladder" and "rung". If you can explain what this is or means I might be able to help you more with understanding the procedure.

good luck,
scienceexpert123

[sciencezone]

Thank you.
The experiment involves determining which substance is more effective in preventing the growth of biofilm on a boat bottom. So you had to make a several boat bottoms from a 2 Liter plastic soda bottle. Each bottom is attached by string to create a ladder to hang in pond water. Each plastic piece is a rung on ladder. The substances applied to each rung are paint, nail polish remover, vaseline, and hot pepper sauce. The top rung is the control ladder is free of any substance.

You are to let the ladder sit in the water for 2 weeks and then examine each ladder with magnifying glass to count the growths on each ladder. This top ladder would then be labeled given a control a rating of 3. Rungs with more growth should be rated 4, while those with much more growth should be rated 7. Rungs with less growth should be rated 2, and those with much less growth should be rated 1.

Right now all I can see is the green algae growing on the rungs. The experiment indicated that I would be able to see brown red or green spots with the magnifying glass and count which ladder had more growths, but I more concerned now with the growth of algae, that I will not be able to make this distinction easily.

I am going to review your guide using a microscope. Can you analyze protist in spite of a significant growhth of algae. Would I have to scrap a sample from each ladder? I will have to analzye my results one day before my project is due, so I really appreciate your guidance. Thanks.

[ScienceExpert123]

dear sciencezone,

I do think that you will able to distinguish between algae and protists, but you will have to use a microscope. You can't tell the difference between algae and protists with just a magnifying glass. If you have another two weeks to redo the experiment I would suggest making the ladder and rungs out of glass or plastic microscope slides so that you can just take the slides out of the water and then put them on the microscope. If you don't have the time, you should try to scrape samples from each ladder rung, I suggest using a cotton swab (q-tip), and then rub the sample from the cotton swab onto a microscope slide and analyze.

good luck,
scienceexpert123