Mobile Bay Reef Keepers

Sue, I find it hard to tell the difference. When I asked a old professor (Ph.D. in microbiology) of mine if he could take a look, he was the one who actually confirmed dinoflagellates, though that was my hunch, as well. That is pretty cool with the whole reactor thing. Were you referring to dinoflagellates or archaea? I could certainly understand if it were archaea (and I guess I could believe dinoflagellates as well, given their resilience).

Doc told me that one of the easiest ways (though it can still be difficult at times) is to look for organelles, which prokaryotic bacteria would lack and would be fairly evident in eukaryotic dinoflagellates. Bacteria are usually (but not always--big exceptions here, but uncommon) a lot smaller also.

It was a type of Bacteria, I'll have to ask him again. I do remember wondering if it would kill them to just run nice clean water thru the pipes.

You know, I remember asking Eric about my purple capricornis. It had some areas that the tissue seemed to be dissolving. It was definately not the same damage done by Nudibranchs. Now that I think about it, there was some of the slime stuff on the underside of it (I thought it was cyanobacteria) where the tissue was dissolving. I wonder if it was the cause, the toxins the stuff secretes was so close to the tissue it killed it. That would make sense, I had it on some of my other Montiporas too.

Yes, bacteria would be smaller. Dinoflagelates would also have a pair of flagella which are used for locomotion. Proper staining and lighting is the key in proper assessment of bacteria. Bacteria are usually 3 to 5 microns long however some of the larger ones can get up to 7 microns but usually not much bigger than that. Also, you should be able to see dinoflagelates in many cases without staining.

Microbiology was one of my favorite subjects however it has been a few years.