I'm going to miss these little guys

11/13/08
So today I went in for my final observation. I found a multitude of halteria, diatoms and rotifers. I looked for my nematodes, but found none. They could have been hiding under the loads of snail poop that were covering the bottom of my microaquarium. I looked for my snails and found the same 2 crawling around. there were less vorticella lining the plants and the bottom. there were blossoms of green algae growing on the sides for the organisms to feed on, but in general there wasn't anything new, and less overall life since the feeding. Its sad, I don't want my snails to die. As cute as those little guys are, I'm glad the semester is winding down.

what did we find today....

11/7/2008

Today I decided to view my microaquarium with the mindset that all organisms were exciting... Just because my cyclops died, doesn't mean that all the other organisms are any less interesting. So, today I found hundreds of Halteria (Free Living Freshwater Protozoa D.J. Patterson). They are taking over. Virtually every view I took had a handful of them. Finally I know what those are though!

I found several shelled rotifers (Guide to Microlife by Kenneth Rainis) as well that were feeding off these green dots that were in patches towards the top. At the bottom of my aquarium I found a lot of diatoms, Blepharisma and Nematodes (Pond 1 Smaller Microlife Poster). I was excited about the nematodes, some were small and one was very very large! And lastly I found 2 snails crawling around in my aquarium. I took some pictures and video of one, and found that I had another under the stereoscope, which I thought gave a very cool view of my microaquarium.

...

10/30/2008

Today I went to view my micro aquarium and was pretty disappointed. I was told that there was a food pellet placed in there for the organisms, but the only organisms I saw were little rotifers, amoebas, the little vorticella (which i have been calling epistylis, but I was wrong) and thats about it. I did see a snail but I looked for it another day and was told it might have crawled out of my aquarium! Well, I did manage to take some pictures of 1) a vorticella 2) a rotifer and 3) one of the plants in my aquarium with these bacteria swimming around it. And I managed to spill more of my water out of my aquarium... :( oh well, i'm too clumsy for this experiment.

water source and plant species

Oh yes, i forgot to update the types of plants that I put in my microaquarium and the source of the water in it.

plant A:
Amblystegium varium , or moss, pretty simple... (http://bryophytes.plant.siu.edu/amblipic.html)

plant B:
Utricularia vulgaris, or Bladderworts, which are carnivorous plants!!! (http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/plants/plantid2/descriptions/utrinf.html)

now my water source, like I said was number 7. It came from a pond at the University of Tennessee Hospital of of Cherokee Trail and Alcoa Highway, and is virtually a storm drain pond. Oh well.....

All my organisms are dying

10/22/2008
So today when I went to look at my microaquarium, it was rather empty and sad. There were several air bubbles and some of the water had dried out. I had a hard time finding any organisms. Of course I saw the diatoms and little zippy species, which I still cannot get an answer as to what they are... I went searching for my little cyclops friend and saw it swimming around towards the bottom of the microaquarium near the dirt, but then I saw a sad thing. A dead exoskeleton of another cyclops. Sad, they're all dying off in there! I guess they must be starving. I did see a huge water flea and a midge (Pond II: Large Microlife poster) , which will turn into a bug later on in life. I also saw several rotifers ("Fresh Water Biology" book)

Another interesting thing happened though, I was starting to give up on my search for new organisms to identify when it was pointed out to me that the little blobs in the microaquarium where actually organisms. These little amoeba (Pond I: Smaller Microlife poster) blobs had been there the whole time, I just wasn't looking for them. They were interesting and apparantly there are two kinds with 2 or 1 nucleus, but mine had only one nucleus in it. The little spiral springy organisms that I failed to identify last week were all over one of the plants in my aquarium, but none of them were moving. I was told they were just feeding, but I think they were dead. They were so lifeless. But I managed to identify them as epistylis ("Free Lving Freshwater Protozoa D.J. Patterson Pg 113).

Lastly, I accidentally spilled some of the water out of my microaquarium! So i refilled it with some water, but I am scared I lost some of my organisms, I will find out next week after the lab instructors put in a food pellet and see if there is a boom in the organisms again...


picture from http://www.microimaging.ca/protozoa/vorticella.html

My first microaquarium

October 15, 2007  

I created my Micro Aquarium today and its pretty exciting.  I used water from the bucket labeled 7... but I'm not quite sure what the water source for this was.  Maybe I will find that out later, because there are a lot of different 

sources and I think it would be interesting to know where my little organisms in my aquarium are from.  I also added two plants, not sure what they were, but one, I believe, eats creatures?  Maybe I heard wrong, not sure though.  Will find out more later.

So when i stuck my microaquarium under the microscope it wasn't very exciting at first.  My lab partner asked me to look at hers for a second so I did and saw something HUGE swim by.  So I thought, well where are my big organisms?!?!?  Well, I didn't find anything big like I saw in hers, but I did find some neat things mine.  First, I saw tons of these little guys zipping around and later found out that those are diatoms... but I didn't think those were exciting enough.  I heard some kid across the table yelling about seeing some cyclops creature, so I was determined to find one of those in mine since we had used the same water source.  And I did!  I saw several, maybe 3 or 4, or just the same one over and over... But they moved so strangely.  It looked like they were on a computer screen, but were certainly interesting looking...  Below is an image on the net i found.

Besides seeing 2 or 3 nematodes, I also found several creatures that I cannot even begin to describe, nor find to identify them.... oh well....   For example, one creature had a circular head and a tail, but it had these crab leg things coming out of the center of the head.  Also, another creature had again, a circular head, but a springy tail... it would whip out and its tail would be straight, but then suddenly it was coiled again and would whip back out.  The organism was anchored down by something, maybe it was stuck, but it wasn't getting anywhere.  

Unfortunately that was all I had time to observe since the lab was ending, but maybe next week I will be able to find some other creatures, and this time identify them! 

 sources:  www.scientificillustrator.com/art/microscopic/cyclops.jpg

www.ucmp.berkely.edu/chromista/bacillariophyta.html