squiggles and wiggles: accounts of soil microscopy

[mad librettist]

I thought it would be cool for the microscopists on the forum to talk about what they are seeing in the teas and samples they are viewing now.

My brewer is just a 5 quart paint bucket, a small aquarium pump, and a stainless steel bonsai rake.

I use the rake to keep the tubing on the bottom of the container. I can do about half a gallon at once reliably.

This brew is from dried fafard shrimp compost, a bit of agave nectar, and a bit of hydrolyzed fish.

24 hours- bacteria are dominating the scene, expecially rod-shaped bacteria. I like to call the stationary ones just rods, but there are mobile types as well, which I divide into "wiggle rods" and "tumble rods".

The protists I am seeing are clumsy swimmers and they are small, which fits the decription of flagellates. so I am confident there is plenty of air, and that I started with a good population.

I added a bit of blackstrap last night, let's see in the next post if I crashed it.

 

[heady blunts]

cool. i want a microscope so badly!

 

[mad librettist]

too many ciliates

too many ciliates

So this brew is going down the drain. I am seeing lots of ciliates, maybe over 20 per "frame" at 400x. Temperature around 70F. Ciliates are associated with low oxygen conditions, so I can infer that this brew has crashed.

Let's look at my first post to see where I went wrong.

I added a bit of blackstrap

Big mistake. Feed the tea at the beginning, feed the right amount, and then leave it alone. Getting impatient and adding food won't speed things up. Had I not been looking with the scope, I would have given this bad tea to my plants.

 

[jaykush]

lol wiggle rods and tumble rods. good stuff.

 

[FlaDankster]

You Da man mad.......great thread idea!!

You purchased the $300 scope correct?

Would be kick ass if this worked it's way into a sticky!

 

[mad librettist]

no, I have a larger binocular scope. It needs a good cleaning!

 

[Microbeman]

I thought it would be cool for the microscopists on the forum to talk about what they are seeing in the teas and samples they are viewing now.

My brewer is just a 5 quart paint bucket, a small aquarium pump, and a stainless steel bonsai rake.

I use the rake to keep the tubing on the bottom of the container. I can do about half a gallon at once reliably.

This brew is from dried fafard shrimp compost, a bit of agave nectar, and a bit of hydrolyzed fish.

24 hours- bacteria are dominating the scene, expecially rod-shaped bacteria. I like to call the stationary ones just rods, but there are mobile types as well, which I divide into "wiggle rods" and "tumble rods".

The protists I am seeing are clumsy swimmers and they are small, which fits the decription of flagellates. so I am confident there is plenty of air, and that I started with a good population.

I added a bit of blackstrap last night, let's see in the next post if I crashed it.

Once you see the flagellates....tea is done. If you have not seen fungal hyphae at 24 hours you likely don't have enough fungi in your compost or hyphae did not find anything good to eat in your brew.

 

[mad librettist]

Once you see the flagellates....tea is done. If you have not seen fungal hyphae at 24 hours you likely don't have enough fungi in your compost or hyphae did not find anything good to eat in your brew.

haha! I knew this thread would be useful. Thanks MM, I've been trying to make my teas look like the ones in your videos that are just exploding with life and very crowded.

Just for shits and giggles, I dosed the bad brew with EM-1, pretty stiff too. I left the pump going.

 

[CT Guy]

A microscope is an excellent tool and highly recommended. If you buy a commercial brewer, they should have done the testing for you and you should be able to get a quality tea every time. Even then, a microscope will let you tweak your brew or come up with a homemade recipe. Don't waste your money on a commercial system unless they have good testing.

 

[rckymtnthuglife]

Is Fungal Hyphae what I'm seeing under low magnification? And are the flagellates more of a round shape that can swim off the screen fairly quickly?

 

[Microbeman]

haha! I knew this thread would be useful. Thanks MM, I've been trying to make my teas look like the ones in your videos that are just exploding with life and very crowded.

Just for shits and giggles, I dosed the bad brew with EM-1, pretty stiff too. I left the pump going.

One thing about my teas in the DVD is that they were made from the freshest, highest quality vermicompost. Also only some of the footage is from actual brewed 'tea' and the rest is from cultures I grew for showing different microbes.

 

[3dDream]

on bacteria: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html

Neat stuff. Have you thought of adding beneficial bacteria to get them started rather than waiting to see who is showing up? From what I understand bacteria will not compete with one another, they will simply fall back if other bacteria have greater numbers. It is called quorum sensing.

 

[Microbeman]

Is Fungal Hyphae what I'm seeing under low magnification? And are the flagellates more of a round shape that can swim off the screen fairly quickly?

Hard to say. Did you use the identification resources on my webpage? The movers could be flagellates or ciliates. If they swim kinda jerky and not like a rocket chances are they are flagellates. If you can see multiple motility hairs, they are ciliates.

 

[Microbeman]

A microscope is an excellent tool and highly recommended. If you buy a commercial brewer, they should have done the testing for you and you should be able to get a quality tea every time. Even then, a microscope will let you tweak your brew or come up with a homemade recipe. Don't waste your money on a commercial system unless they have good testing.

Ya but where do they get good testing?

 

[CT Guy]

Very funny....

For lack of better testing options, I'd say either SFI or direct microscopy skills. How's that?

 

[Microbeman]

on bacteria: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html

Neat stuff. Have you thought of adding beneficial bacteria to get them started rather than waiting to see who is showing up? From what I understand bacteria will not compete with one another, they will simply fall back if other bacteria have greater numbers. It is called quorum sensing.

Yes we have thought of this and experimented, however my current thought process originates with the consideration that if you are using (vermi)compost and are looking for nutrient cycling via predation of bacteria/archaea you may be likely to have more success with bacteria/archaea and the protozoa doing the eating, coming from the same 'compost' source and kinda growing up together already cycling nutrients. If you are fortunate you'll also have fungi growing from the same compost source.

 

[mad librettist]

This time I used a recipe close to the one on the microbeorganics site.

3TBS compost (2.38%)
1/2 gallon water
2.8tsp molasses (0.75%)
1/4tsp fish Hydrolysate (0.063%)
1tsp bio tone (for the meals) (0.25%)
azomite 1/4 tsp (0.063%)ic

Made it yesterday afternoon. 5 This morning it was very well populated with lots of flagellates, but I did not have time to water. Checked again under the scope around 11:30 and it looked good and very, very crowded. Lots and lots of flagellates, barely any big ciliates. No hyphae though.

This recipe seems to yield more and more varied life than a molasses only brew.

 

[Glodenglow1]

Cool post, might have to get a scope

 

[mad librettist]

today's tea - t'was teeming!

it's weird though, no testate amoebae. I used to have tons of those.

 

[Microbeman]

I just had a look at my little private project worm bin vermicompost (VC). I've had it going for over 6 months without harvesting and feeding only every 10 days forcing the worms to redigest material. Under the scope without any food it is the most active I've every seen, including very large naked amoebae and gobs of bacterial feeding nematodes. I'm doing an experiment where I took some VC from that bin and some from another regular cycle (3 months) bin and mixed them 20:1 with wheat bran in a tray and covered with wet paper towel to see what grows over 8 days. One immediate effect was the paper towel covering the older VC became stained an brown/orangy color which shows when testing for humate levels.