How big is a rotifer

[Luis]

Here you can see a pic of artemia nauplii how big is a rotifer compared with this artemia ...as big as his eye maybe?

I'm trying to rear rotifers but looking at the microscope I don't know how big they could be...

I've heard you can see them naked eye like small particles swimming around but what's their swimming pattern?

 

[Anonymous]

100 microns (0.1 mm)

 

[Anonymous]

Depends on the rotifer. I believe the smallest are around 50 microns. FWIW newly hatched Artemia nauplii are about 400 microns.

 

[Anonymous]

what's their swimming pattern?

Three-dimensional random walk. You can see them zigg-zagging under a microscope. You can see them as little flecks or reflected light with the (pardon the expression) naked eye.

 

[Luis]

thanks guys for all your answers.

Why you excuse about the figure of speech "naked eye" ? or was a joke...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_eye

Ok, under the microscope they move in a zig zag pattern, can you see a pattern without the microscope or they just seem to float around ?

See ya

 

[Anonymous]

They just float around. It was a joke.

 

[Luis]

Now I take a look under the microscope... in the sample I found two different kinds of creatures, can you watch the videos? and tell me if one of them is a rotifer or something else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5z-XWc-5Zc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuVo6iPvl4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZxQtUxQCpk

As you can see my microscope has no good definition :x

The artemia pic above was taken with 200x magnification
The rotifers (???) movies are 60x

 

[chris&barb]

Heres a clear video of rotifers

If your looking at them under the microscope to try and count them i wouldnt even bother. Measure out one or to ml of culture water and put it in a test tube and hold it up to the light. Then count the specks of dust(rotifers) you see.

If your just starting out culturing rotifers this should help