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Mystery Bug of the Month

February-07

Target Higher Forms. . . . . Gold Medal Winners or Nature's pretty "Predators"

OK, these are the guys to shoot for in most activated sludge plants. They are called Suctorians. They almost always indicate an extremely healthy system and usually the BOD in the final effluent is very low, the TSS may low and things are running smoothly. If you have these in your plant, you are probably running very good and should congratulate yourselves! The bad thing is they do not always correlate with filaments. A system with high filaments can have a low BOD and a very low TSS, yet cause bulking, high polymer consumption and high solids handling costs.

Although they look very pretty, watch out, well only if you are a microscopic higher life form. They are deadly predators! They stab unsuspecting higher life forms that swim by and suck their guts out. Nice huh- violence even under the microscope- eat or be eaten, same as the laws of the jungle, oh well, It was amazing and a weird experience to watch . . . ..

We do have videos of this, but they are too large to load on a website. They are one megabyte for each second, so typically 20-30 MG files, so you can see how big the files would get. You may contact us for copies of the videos if you are interested.

These photomicrographs were taken from a wastewater sample. Most of the objectives used were 100x, 400x and 1000x.

Come take a closer look at the amazing world under the microscope!

They can have long or short spikes and come in many different sizes and shapes	The distinguishing feature is spikes instead of hairs like a stalked ciliate. Here are our two critters with lunch on the table already
They can sometimes be hidden in the floc structures- look for spikes
100x Here the suctorian looks like he has caught his prey	400x a top view
Some only have a few long spikes The suctorian tentacles can be extremely long and agile	Some have many short ones
400x
Here you can see the Coleps on the left side, part of the cells is collapsing
Remember, even though it is only a drop of water and seems flat on the slide, they are 3-D, you might need to focus in and out on your microscope	You can see the poor Coleps on the left has almost had all the life sucked out of him

Here is a suctorian that is stained with Lacto-Phenol Cotton Blue stain

It is thought that upon contact, suctorians inject their prey with poison and immoblize them. They then suck the cytoplasm from the prey organism, ie the name suctorian!

Here the Coleps is totally collapsed

Free-swimming ciliates are the basic prey of Suctorians. There have been several observations of flagellates and amoebae captured as prey also.

More than 500 suctorian species are known to date.

Here it appears that a flagellate may be caught by the Suctorian

Here, this suctorian has caught a crawling ciliate!

Mystery Bug-3-05

More on Suctorians

Want to see more of the Mystery Bug- videos and photos

Mystery Bug 9-04 Mystery Filament of the Month 9-04 Mystery Filament of the Month 10-04

Mystery Bug 10-04 Mystery Bug-11-04 Mystery Bug-12-04 Mystery Bug-1-05

Mystery Bug-2-05 Mystery Bug-3-05 Mystery Bug-4-05 Mystery Bug-5-05

Mystery Bug-6-05 Mystery Bug-7-05 Mystery Bug-8-05

Mystery Bug-9-05 Mystery Bug-10-05 Mystery Bug-11-05   Mystery Bug-12-05

Mystery Bug 1-06 Mystery Bug 2-06 Mystery Bug 3-06 Mystery Bug 4-06   Mystery Bug 5-06 Mystery Bug 6-06

Mystery Bug 7-06   Mystery Bug 7-06 II Mystery Bug 8-06

Mystery Bug 8-06 II   Mystery Bug 9-06 II Mystery Bug 10-06 Mystery Bug 11-06    Mystery Bug 12-06

2007 Mystery Bugs

Mystery Bug 1-07 Mystery Bug 2-07    Mystery Bug 3-07 Mystery Bug 4-07

Mystery Bug 5-07   Mystery Bug 6-07 Mystery Bug 7-07 Mystery Bug 8-07

Mystery Bug 9-07   Mystery Bug 10-07 Mystery Bug 11-07 Mystery Bug 12-07

Stay tuned each month

More to come soon!

Enlargements: If you liked these pictures and want to see additional microorganisms check out the pages below.

Amoeba

Flagellates

Free Swimming Ciliates

Eating under the microscope- Dinner time!

What if you do not have a lab or microscope onsite that is capable of performing an analyses of your system?

Find out how Environmental Leverage's lab can perform an analyses of your biomass in your system and make recommendation on how to improve your system.

Wastewater Biomass Analyses

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