The little monsters in our tank (Beware: Science Pictures Inside!!!)

[ScubaSteve]

A little while back I was staring at the glass in my tank watching these bugs smaller than a pinhead bomb around the glass at a pretty good pace. A quick back of the napkin calculation said that these little buggers were running around at the equivalent of a human running 150 km/hr! (~20x their body length per second) "What are these microscopic speed demons?", I thought.

So, doing what any other normal person would do, I spent half an hour trying to catch one, dried it, gold coated it, and tossed it in a scanning electron microscope (SEM).

This is what speed-racer looks like close up!

***I did this pretty quick and half-arsed, so pardon the dried salt crystals and other junk in the pics***