A few tinies

I've been experimenting with a camera/loupe* combination. I was using the loupe to look for miniature critters in my aquarium and decided to try to get photos of what I was seeing. I used my regular camera with the 40mm lens, and then my pocket camera on the macro setting, which gives a noisy photo, but seems to match the loupe better.

It didn't work for catching the copepods and hair-thin worms. I'll have to try something else. But here is a pair of cute snails, resting after mating.

Periwinkles, maybe?

I got one out (not one of this pair; they were busy) and measured it. Point to mouth, it measured 5mm. The little bright spots in the water are copepods.

And a small limpet. The section of circle is the frame of the loupe.

The whitish coil at the side of the foot is its gills. And in the centre of the mouth, I could see the radula moving, scraping forward; scrape, pause, scrape, pause, scrape ... Always forward, never reversing.

How the radula works. (Wikipedia)

*The loupe looks like one of these.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He estado haciendo experimentos con la cámara combinado con una lupa. Estaba usando la lupa para buscar animales miniaturos en mi acuario, y se me ocurrió tratar de sacar fotos. Usé la cámara de siempre, con la lente a 40mm, y luego la cámara de bolsillo, que no da fotos tan claras, pero funcionó mejor con la lupa.

No sirvió para los copepodos y los gusanitos del grueso de un cabello, que era lo que trataba de ver, pero aquí hay una foto de una pareja de caracolitos, que miden aproximadamente 5 milímetros, boca a punto de la concha.

Y una lapa. El arco del círculo es el margen de la lupa.

El espiral blanco/gris al lado del pie es la branquia. Y en el centro de la boca, se puede ver la radula, la lenguita raspadora. Siempre está en movimiento, siempre para adelante. Raspa, para, raspa, para, raspa ... nunca regresa, siempre se ve raspando para adelante.

El diagrama muestra como funciona esta radula.