Final Viewing of my microaquarium

On the afternoon of 11/11/11, I made my final observations.First of all, my water, from Dean's Woods, was very dirty looking and it seemed as if a layer of dirt had begun to build up on the glass as well some very small sort of filamentous algae as well as some other sort of green single-celled algae that barely visible. Amongst all of this clutter in the lower third of the water there were many, many rotifers sp. There were also many coleps sp. which I hadn't noticed many of since the first viewing. There were also a lot of nematodes which I had not seen before. There were also still many epalxis sp. So the cyclops sp. had multiplied since the previous week. They have a tendency to stay in the corners and edges of the aquarium. I saw two males and two females. One female had two egg sacs attached and the other female just had one. Two of cyclops looked vey clean, the other two seemed to have debris attached to them. The moss, amblestegium sp., was still living but had clusters of orange-ish filamentous growths attached at regular intervals down its stalks. Amoebas, rotifers and paramecium seemed to congregate amongst these clusters. The carnivorous plant Utricularia gibba L is dead.

Picture Day for Outstanding Members of my Microaquarium Community

So, on Friday, Nov. 4, 2011, I returned to lab to view my micro aquarium, photograph a few distinct organisms, identify them and edit the photos to post to this blog. It really hadn't changed much from the previous week.

 I found this Coleochate sp. It is stationary and photosynthetic (Raven, Figure 17-36a).

This is who I call Mr. Cyclops sp. He is an arthropod that moves quickly and directly. I was unable to get an image of the female (Thorp, Figure 16c).

This is Epalxis sp., is a protozoa that moves slowly erraticly with two flaggelum, one leads the other lags behind (Patterson, Figure 311).

This is a Rotifer sp., there are many of these in my aquarium and like the Cyclops sp, they also move quickly (Patterson, Figure 15).

This Vorticella sp., is a protozoa that is stationary in that it's base is anchored. It has multiple flagellum that it uses to create a current that draws a random selection possible food to it. (Patterson, Figure 233).

Microaquarium Observation 3

Since last viewing my microaquarium, a beta food pellet from "Atison's Bet Food" had been added to the microaquarium, as well as more water. The original source of the water was Spring Creek at Dean's Woods (http://botany1112011.blogspot.com/). The next thing that stood out a lot was that the Utricalaria gibba seems to have died, the mossy Amblestegium, doesn't look so great, but it is still green p://botany1112011.blogspot.com/). There were two cyclops there today. I first saw them on Oct. 20, 2011, there were two living that day, and one corpse. Today I noticed that the pair consists of a male and a female. The female distinguished by egg sacs (http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/index.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/pond/index.html). There is also an overwhelming number of diatom colonies, with rectangular shape concentrated more densely the closer you get to the soil (http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/index.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/pond/index.html). Today I also noticed flagellated protazoa, probably euglenoids in large numbers (http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/index.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/pond/index.html). There were filamentous spirogyra just like we saw in lab today that I had'nt seen before. The ciliates suctoria that I first saw on Oct. 20 had increased greatly in number and were concentrated on the plants. I also noticed bryozoans on the plants as well. missing from first sight last week was the midge. Nothing else that was recorded on the Oct. 20 viewing seemed to be missing. The ciliated protazoa coleps was still around but not in localized concentrations like last week. Another new find, which I saw only one of i indentified on a poster in the lab room I think it is the Sarcodinid diffugia. There are also clusters of colonial green algae that I'm not so sure what they are yet as I had a difficult time focusing on them.