Australia's Science Forum

Hi all,

I want to add something to wet mounts of protozoans like paramecium & euglena to slow them down so getting a good look under a microscope is easier, especially to watch cilia beating.

Methyl cellulose or gelatine work OK, but does anyone have a solutions that really slows them down but doesn't kill them?

Thanks,

Kiah

Hi Kiah, not sure if it's a help or not but when we did this prac at uni they used glucose to slow down those little critters.... Not sure if it would work better than what you're using tho! They only add a drop & stir it up before letting us loose!

Cool them down in the fridge??

we use a methylcellulose soln.

works well

Hey guys, a weird thing happened to me today with paramecium.

I made a hay infusion over the weekend, and when I made the first slide there were heaps of parmecia/parameciums/booglies swimming around on my slide. THEN I stirred the mix and made another, and there these tiny tiny booglies, that looked ridiculously tiny, even under high power. There were heaps of them, attacking a fragment of grass - all head and lashing tail. Anyway, by the end of the lesson there were NO paramecium at all, just a bunch of busted cells, and loads more of the tiny green tadpole looking booglies. Attack of the killer bugs eh?

But... the coolest thing was watching a green something undergo mitosis right there on the computer microscope. It took about half a lesson. We could see nucleotides migrating to the edge of the cells, and all the other processes that kids only learn about in black and white sketches. VERY cool.

Oh, and BTW we use methyl cellulose to slow paramecium down.

Oh wow!! That sounds so good!!! What a great lesson for the class! Imagine the chances of finding/seeing that at exactly the right time!