Observation 11/06/07

Plant life and animal life this week have again made a significant increase! The algae population has grown to about twice of its volume from what it was last week. There are some brown string like growth structures that have appeared on sections of the moss this week. I believe they might be the beginnings of root structures, as they are growing towards the bottom of the aquarium. The also are only appearing on the ends of certain parts of the moss, this also leading me to the conclusion that they are roots.

The Animal life has again increased significiantly, especially in the higher life forms. The multi-cellular forms have shown the biggest increase. There are a lot more Plenariums, Copepods, and Cyclops. In fact Dr. McFarland observed some creatures that I had seen, and there were many of them around the aquarium, and we identified them as baby Cyclops!

During the observation, I was able to see where a Cyclops had died and left it’s skeleton. At the remains were approximately a dozen paramecium circling, and bumping, and perhaps crawling along the body. It seemed as if they were feeding, or trying to feed off of it.

Observation3

On Thursday 10/25/07 Dr. McFarland added a Beta Fish food pellet to the aquarium. The details are as follows: It is made by Ocean Nutrition, Aqua Pet Americas, 3528 West 500 South, Salt Lake City, UT 84104. Ingredients: Fish meal, wheat flower, soy meal, krill meal, minerals, vitamins and preservatives. Analysis: Crude Protein 36%; Crude fat 4.5%; Crude Fiber 3.5%; Moisture 8% and Ash 15%.

It has made a drastic difference in the Micro Aquarium! Even by looking with the unaided eye you can tell there is an increased amount of vegetation growth. The greatest increase appears to have been with the algae. There are strings of algae anchored all over the aquarium. There is also a marked increase in animal life as well. Last week I had trouble locating some organisms, however this week everywhere I have observed there have been large amounts of varied types of organisms. I was able to observe a water flea for the first time this week. Many rotifers of two different types were there. Also this week I was able to observe two amoebas, which was the first time I had seen them as well! There are two pictures up of them, and it was such a thrill to watch them. They moved around, oozing their way over strings of algae and around other obstacles. It was fascinating to watch their cytoplasm stream around as they did so. There also seemed to be more air bubbles this time too, suggesting that there is some anaerobic respiration going on, and since the aquarium is not air tight, some aerobic possibly as well. I was also able to identify and observe many vorticella plants anchored all over the aquarium as well. There were two or three other organisms I have yet to identify that I hope to find and give the information on as well this upcoming week.

Here we have the converted pictures from last week. The round animal with the small tail is a type of rotifer (I gave the specific type in the post) and the other snake like animal is a plenarium.

Allright! So here are some pictures from this week! One is a rotifer, very actively searching and pulling in water for food. The other two are Amoebas, and this was the first time I had seen them. It was quite interesting to see them ooze around and watch the cytoplasm steam as they moved.

Aha! Well, pehaps this will work. The others I think need to be converted from photoshop files to lepg or gif files. Well, at least this one is up!

Pictures

Alright, so I'm having trouble posting the pictures.... hopefully I'll get this figured out soon and get them up.

First Observation

These are the observations for 10/23.

This was the first observation after the initial setup for the aquarium. Dr. MacFarland and I took a picture of the whole Micro-Aquarium, and then took pictures through a microscope of a few different organisms. I believe we were also going to put a beta-fish food pellet in, but we were unable to do so. I also hope to have the pictures up soon, tonight or tomorrow.
Upon first observation, not much had changed between this week and last. The only thing I did note was there seemed to be fewer of the paramecium running around in the water, however, there was still too many for me to count well.
I did follow a “Rotifer Vulgaris” for a while as it inched along. The rotifer then seemed to anchor itself along the edge of some moss and stretch out into the water and feed on the particulates that it found. I also happened to observe a different type of rotifer, the rotifer “Disylainermis or Euclanis Macura”. I am pretty sure it was the Disylainermis. It is much more of a round shape than the Vulgaris, and it seemed to float around the edge of some moss as well, although I did not really see it feed.
Next I saw a Flagella, a “Peranema”, flipping its flagella around moving from place to place. Oddly enough it moved towards the flagella instead of away from it. The Peranema encountered a paramecium and seemed to check it out with the flagella before moving on.
The most exciting observation today was a couple of Copepods!!!! It’s the first multi- cellular creature I’ve observed, a member of Arthropoda. It looks similarly to a horseshoe crab. It moved by twitching it’s antennae and legs. It was moving in and out of the moss and seemed quite active. Hopefully I’ll be able to take a picture of one, or at least pull one from the net and stick it here so you can see what it looks like.

Initial observation

This blog is for the Botany 111 course. We are observing a micro aquarium that we put together in lab; taking note of the micro-organisms in it; the changes that occour in the next few weeks in the animals, the water, and the moss that we included; and besides that I'll also be including some more detailed information about one of the organisms that I can find.

Let's Start with the initial assembly and observations on 10/16.

After receiving the micro-aquarium the bottom layer of water and sediment I took from container 5. The middle layer I took from container 6, and the last layer of water I took from the surface water of the plant "Bramiliad" in the greenhouse. Also, the moss that was chosen to go in the micro-aquarium was moss "c". After letting everything settle for a few minutes, I put the aquarium under the microscope to observe what was there. There were many many oblong paramecium, more than what I could count in an organized fashion, rapidly swimming everywhere in straight lines, spirals loops, etc. Next there was a ciliate, I'm not sure which specific one, that looked like a flat pancake with hairs/flagella radiating outward around the edge of it's body. Also, I observed four Rotifers, rotifer vulgaris, inching in and around especially close to the moss. The last thing I have to report is the algae and strings of cyanobacteria that appears in the aquarium. The algae appeared in small single cell units rectangular in look floating and moving around. These were all over the aquarium, as well as strings of what appeared to be some sort of cyanobacteria (photosynthetic bacteria).