Identify My Invertebrate?

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ziggypie

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It's odd to say, but this looks like either some sort of Cestode, or a larval form of something much bigger than anything I have in the tank (save the Axolotls and the fake decor). I took this picture from a dissecting scope, I was silly and forgot to record the power, but I think it was between 10 and 20x (obviously no ocular power). If it helps, that blurb that you see next to it is an ostracod crustacean ~0.3 mm. Thank you!
 

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It's a worm, that's about all I can tell you. Perhaps a nematode? I'm afraid I'm not very good at the game of "name that invert". :cry:

May I use your photo for Caudata Culture? I'm assembling a page of photos of "tank critters", and this would fit right in. Please PM me and tell me what name the copyright credit should be to.
 
I'm fairly certain its not a Cestode. I assume thats the head on the photo which means it appears to lack a means of securing itself inside a host which is characteristic of most Cestodes. At a guess I'd say it was a small Annelid. Do you have a sand based substrate on the bottom? Is it possible for you to post a bigger picture of the whole organism as I could run it past my parasitology lecturers to see if they recognise it.
 
I was having fun taking more pictures, and so let's turn this into a game! I know most of my little friends (except for the worm you will see- as we obviously haven't gotten that one figured out yet, so keep at that one in the first post if you can, haha), but here we go!! ::booming game show voice:: "IDENTIFY MY INVERTEBRATES!" hehehe... And Jennewt, if you like these, too, then they are yours for the benefit of the forum! :)

I forgot to mention that these were all taken with a compound light microscope- under either scanning or low power!
 

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The 5th and 6th are ostracods, those are the only ones I know for sure. Thanks for posting!
 
Correct so far! I love the first picture because if you look inside the sac there is a Rotifer just hanging out, looking so very cool and composed. If you look on another one of my threads, you'll see I have a special place in my heart for my wheel-bearers :) Keep at it, folks!
 
I finally got these photos posted on CC:
http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/Tank_critters2.shtml

Does anyone care to venture an ID for the first 3 photos in the group above?


P.S. I have moved this thread out of the axolotl area, as it seems to be of more general interest and not axie-specific.
 
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Just come across this thread. Nice photos!

The 1st photo looks to me like a ciliate protozoan.

The 2nd is a bdelloid (leech-like) rotifer.

The 3rd looks like another ciliate, though it's hard to be sure.

The 4th is another rotifer.

5 and 6 are ostracods. I vaguely recognise the creature with the ostracod but don't have my book handy I'm afraid.

7 looks like a small oligochaete worm (there are a lot of species and they're tricky to identify - theres a good link at http://sunsite.ualberta.ca/Projects/Aquatic_Invertebrates/?Page=17 )

Tristan
 
With the worm in the first post, I think it's an annelid worm, since it appears to be segmented. Nematodes do not have segmentation. It's possibly an Oligochaete, but I'm not into non-arthropod invertebrate identification.

As a fun trivia, nematodes are eutelic, which means that when they're adults, they have a fixed number of cells in their body.
 
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