I am looking for tips on how to find microbes and tardigrades. I have a Brock Magiscope with magnifications of 20x, 40x, 50x, 100x, 200x, and 400x. I look at drops of water from ponds, marshes, and woodland puddles quite frequently, but never seem to find anything but bubbles and bits of dust. I can view plant cells very well, sometimes seeing even some of the organelles. I also try to find tardigrades at magnifications of 20x and 40x, but only get a very good look at moss leaves. Do you have any tips? I’d love to know! Thank you!
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For meiofauna, be sure to look at sediment rather than just the water. They are a lot more abundant there. I also usually leave my probes standing undisturbed for 2-3 days and look at them every day. Most things living in there should multiply.
For planktonic organisms, I recommend getting a plankton net instead of just scooping up the water in a jar. That way you will get a lot more life in the same amount of water.
For Sessilida, I had the most luck with looking at floating plants or submerged roots near the water surface.
P.S.: The puddles that form inside hollowed out tree branches have a lot of stuff in them
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I’m taking the water from a pond; how should I get the sediment without diving into the abyss?
Plankton net?
With the help of a really long stick or pole. Attach the jar to one end and then slowly scoop up a bit of sediment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankton_net
They are special nets designed to catch microorganisms. Slowly move it through the water for a while (if you’re too fast, you’re just pushing the water and nothing will get in) and the microorganisms start accumulating in the small collection jar at the tip of the net. I saw one on amazon, but idk how good it is. They’re not very cheap unfortunately, but not super expensive either.
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I read that you can find tardigrades in moss in roof gutters, so I went out and collected a piece of moss from the gutter (eastern England in those days). It was winter so I had to wait for it to thaw out, and within an hour there were the tardigrades crawling about. But if you are in a hot dry area, you may not have moss in your guttering.
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Wow! I am never so lucky!
You don’t necessarily have to go to the middle of a pond/lake to get the sediment, as well! Usually near the edge of a water body there will be a muddy area, and you can scoop up water from there.
Squeezing the water from aquatic plants is also a good trick.
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I edited this topic’s title, as it’s a question about finding subjects, not broader microscopy.
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Update: I found a nematode and another microbe which is the next observation. No tardigrades, though. 
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Yes, mosses, and also leafy liverworts from tree bark. Once hydrated, I’ve found rotifers and nematodes in stuff that was collected and stored dry for half a year. Pretty much every time I’ve put a leafy liverwort sample under a microscope, there were some microscopic creatures coming to life and crawling around on the slides after a short while. Bdelloid rotifers in particular seem to hide out in the lobules on the underside of leafy liverworts in my area (North Carolina).
Edited to add: Looking at tardigrade observations in my area, foliose lichens (in addition to mosses) seem to be another very good substrate to check for them. By now I’ve seen several references to lichens on rocks as well as on fallen tree branches.
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here’s a good video about tardigrades, starting at the section specifically about marine tardigrades and how to collect them: https://youtu.be/9lZpF0oatYA?si=InFvQ3TndaR_58d7&t=780.
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Back in the day, I worked with a woman who collected tardigrades from tanks at a wastewater treatment plant (with permission).
What magnification do you need for tardigrades? What magnification for rotifers?
What are rotifers, anyway? I never seem to remember.
What kind are those again? Does common greenshield lichen count?
There’s some information here: https://ohioplants.org/lichen-biology/
Greenshield lichen counts.
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Yes, greenshield lichen is the foliose type (leaf-like shape). Rotifers are another type of zooplankton. The ones I’ve found moved around quite quickly, using a contracting and stretching motion. I think they’re slightly smaller than tardigrades (which I haven’t seen yet myself) but due to their movements were easy to spot under 40x, 100x and 400x magnification.
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Thank you! I think I saw the rotifers a few days ago!
I usually take photos of them at 100x. (Example). 200x might be even better, but I don’t have a 20x objective, so I don’t want to say anything that isn’t true.
I have also never found a tardigrade yet, but afaik they are on average comparable in size, usually a bit larger, but 100x should probably work for them too.
They are animals within the clade Prostomia, probably most closely related to taxa that are similarly obscure (Gnathostimulida, Gastrotricha). Within the Prostomia they seem to be in the clade Platyzoa (flatworms and allies) – as opposed to Ecdysozoa (arthropods, nematodes, and allies) or Lophotrochozoa (molluscs, annelids and allies).
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