Unknown freshwater ciliate

Tardigrade37 · Post by **Tardigrade37** » Sun Sep 13, 2015 4:16 pm

Hi all,

I found this lobed ciliate in my freshwater fish tank. For the life of me, I cannot place an ID on it. There were a number of these in the sample, so I am confident that it is not being distorted under the coverslip. Sorry, I didn't bother to clean up the images. 63x/1.2 C-Apo

Any thoughts?

Bruce Taylor · Post by **Bruce Taylor** » Sun Sep 13, 2015 4:52 pm

Beautiful, clear images. The cytostome is very conspicuous, and we can see that this guy is a cyrtophorid. I believe it is a species of parasitic Chilodonella, a notorious pest in fishtanks and ponds. Some species are bilobed, or heart-shaped, but I haven't seen pics of any that were quite so dramatically bifurcated!

Here, for comparison, is Kahl's drawing of C. cyprini:

lukem321 · Post by **lukem321** » Sun Sep 13, 2015 8:05 pm

Awesome, I would've assumed it was dividing. I wonder how it looks when it divides.

Tardigrade37 · Post by **Tardigrade37** » Sun Sep 13, 2015 8:54 pm

Thanks for the comments. I will work on capturing a video of this critter as it seems to not be very common - at least not in the morphology that is seen here.

Marek Mis · Post by **Marek Mis** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 4:34 am

Very interesting images !
Did you use any flash or this ciliate was slow enough ?

Marek

Protos · Post by **Protos** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 10:36 am

Woaw !!!! exciting pictures
Never seen before

carlos.uruguay · Post by **carlos.uruguay** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 7:02 pm

Beautiful photos! Very very interesting topic