I found this organism growing in a container we used to use to hold homemade baby wipes. The water it is floating in is simply tap water with a bit of tea tree oil, but it has been sitting stagnant for quite some time, as we apparently forgot to dump it when we were through using it. I find it quite fascinating, and would love to know what it is, if anyone would be kind enough to tell me their ideas.

 

If the pics aren't clear enough, I can ask my husband to try.

 

Thank you in advance!

 

Dawn

a condom?

Hahaha! Nope. Try again. Guess I could have written that it is only about the size of a nickel.

A colony of some kind of microorganism. Unfortunately, it really isn't very easy to tell what those are just by looking. Though it seems a little more patterned than what I'm used to, so my guess is a fungus.

Thank you. If it wasn't Christmas break, I'd try to get hold of a local high school/junior high science teacher and see if they could look at it under a microscope. Is it safe to assume, since simply visually inspecting doesn't yield answers, the microscope would be what we need?

More important would be an expert. I've looked at things under a microscope and they look mostly like blobs; I'd only be able to distinguish the species if I was given a limited number to choose from. But a microscope would be enough to distinguish its general type even for the inexperienced, you could find whether it is an eukaryote or what shape it is.