Week 5 Observations

So for the final observation, I did find a new organism in my microaquarium

This is a Limnais sp. rotifer (Rainis and Russell 1996). When the microaquarium was disrupted, the organism retreated into itself, but eventually came out as shown in the video above. It's pretty cool to watch.

Other than this, everything looked the same in my microaquarium, there was again just more of each organism present. It's starting to get a little crowded in there actually. I also saw my worm moving around in the dirt at the bottom, but wasn't able to see a clear or good view of it.

Week 4 Observations

It's the last of my observations and there has been a big change. I found a worm! I had seen movement near the bottom of my microaquarium before, but this time I could finally see what was causing the movement, and I'm pretty sure there was more than one because no matter how hard I tried to avoid the nasty things, it kept showing up in my view. One of the distinct feature was small hair like pieces coming off all over the body in pairs. They looked like hairs growing out of warts. I though I wanted to see a big worm, but it was really gross to me. I believe it's a Aeolosoma sp.

The following picture is was I believe some cell division going on and I thought it was cool that there were four. I wasn't able to identify specifically what they were but it's a good picture.

Most of my aquarium looked the same otherwise, just bigger organisms moving about now. 

Week 3 Observations

This week Dr. McFarland added "Atison's Betta Food" made by Ocean Nutrition, Aqua Pet Americas, 3528 West 500 South, Salt Lake City, UT 84104. Ingredients include fish meal, wheat flower, soy meal, krill meal, minerals, vitamins and preservatives. The analysis: Crude Protein 36%; Crude fat 4.5%; Crude Fiber 3.5%; Moisture 8% and Ash 15% (McFarland 2013). This created much more diversity in my microaquarium and much more microorganisms to view. 

One of the first organisms I found was a Bodo sp. It has two flagella and is recognized by it's flickering motion (Patterson 50). 

The next organism I identified was an Epilaxis sp. This had many cilia in on one end, and then one on the opposite end. 

Another ciliate I found was a Tachysoma sp. (Patterson 125). This also had cilia on opposite ends of the organism.

And to add to that was a Pleuronema (Patterson 150) which had a veil on it as shown in the picture below. 

My final picture is a Heterophrys sp. (Patterson 173). This had distinct rigid spikes that were asymmetrical.

I have not found any larger animals like worms or cyclops--mostly just single celled organisms taking over my microaquarium.