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10x is good enough for many interesting subjects. Stuff like daphnia, and especially diatoms. I'd like to have a source of diatoms. I tried car-body rubbing com

10x is good enough for many interesting subjects. Stuff like daphnia, and especially diatoms. I'd like to have a source of diatoms. I tried car-body rubbing compound, which is sometimes made with diatoms, but I don't think the stuff I tried had diatoms in it. I spent a feverish couple of weeks learning about microscopy and slide-preparation, before handing over the 'scope I bought to my son, to save him time doing the research himself (I guess I was afraid he'd be too busy). I've handed it over now; but I bought myself a 10x and 20x hand-lens.

dekhn 3y ago
You can order live diatoms from Carolina Biological: https://www.carolina.com/algae/diatoms-living/FAM_153020.pr https://www.carolina.com/algae/diatoms-living/FAM_153020.pr you can grow the culture you get from them continuously if you enjoy keeping algae pets. note that diatom are really hard to see, and you do want very high magnification. These days I don't really use slides- I found that glass-bottom petri dishes work well, but that's at least partly because I do inverted imaging (objective pointing up, through the sample, towards the illumination) with a custom-built XY stage microscope.