Dear Tom,
 
My mother and I are  taking terrestrial detritus, fine earth, fine rubble, mould, leaves, mostly on rocks with vegetation, at the feet of rocks,
on walls under ivy and so on. When the detritus (I dont't know how
you will call it in English) is too moist, my mother let it dry open,
at the windows bank or anywhere else. Then she takes some sieves
(as you can find in the kitchen) with different netting and makes
several samples, where she can sort out the different shells. First
she will find the larger ones. At least in the finest samples she can
sort out by hand the real micro-shells. She is looking with her lens
(or you say magnifier) always a very very very small quantity of earth
mould, etc., which could placed between two fingers. She will pick
up the shells with a very fine pencil (or as I do with a pair of tzweezers
(called Leonhard-tweezer - a very fine tweezer) ond with the
spitted forefinger. This is going very well and on the dry earth or
mould you can find a lot of micro-shells.
If you like some terrestrial micro-shells (as we have just spoken about
changing before), I can send you some nice species.
The other way to get micros out from earth is floating. But here - sorry
I have no experiance, I don't think that the shells are coming out not
as fresh as picked up.
You can put earth in a great pot, making  it  warm for a not too long time
at the fire, and stiring up. Then later the earth will sink down and the
micros are floating at the surface of the water. This you only might be
able if you have a house with a garden, where you can put away the
wet earth or mould. So you can take off the shells from the surface of
the water. Shells I saw with this method are often badly crusted with
earth and are looking loamy and muddy.
Dry taken and picked up shells from earth, maybe covered with
earth too, but not so badly and are looking more fresh. In micro
shells there can often be a rest of earth grains and so on in the
aperature, but for me it makes nothing. If you find some sand or
that on the shells you migjht polish them for yourself, but you can
see, that I am sending to you very fresh specimens selected from
earth in the first way.
with my best regards
yours Helmut Nisters from Innsbruck
 
 
 
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> I know there was a thread some time ago on this topic, but I can't find it.
> Could someone email me the procedure for floating micro snails out of leaf
> litter? Or some better way than picking?
>
>
>
> *  G Thomas Watters               *
> *  Ohio Biological Survey &       *
> *  Aquatic Ecology Laboratory     *
> *  Ohio State University          *
> *  1315 Kinnear Rd.               *
> *  Columbus, OH 43212 USA         *
> *  v:614-292-6170 f:614-292-0181  *
>
> "The world is my oyster, except for months with an "R" in them" - Firesign
> Theater
>
> "A paranoid is a man who knows a little of what's going on" - William
> Burroughs
>