5th Observation

From the first day I observed my aquarium, it has been full of life and many organisms. The amount of organisms nearly doubled from the second to third week due to me adding an extra food pellet in the aquarium. During my final observation, I noticed some organisms missing, like the vorticella and the midge. The amount of rotifers was about a third as many as there were during the second week. Despite everything that was missing from the previous weeks, there were many new changes this week. The amount of algae was unbelievable. There were several different forms of algae from small single celled to spirogyra (Canter-Luna, and Luna 56) and cyanobacteria. The algae was on both plants, but it almost took over the plant B, which makes believe the algae takeover is causing the slow death to the plant. The sphaerocystis was one of the most common algae, and it grows in colonies (Canter-Luna, and Luna 23).There were motile and non motile euglena, which could be identified by whether or not the organisms had a flagella (Canter-Luna, and Luna 97). There were also a bunch of desmids (Canter-Luna, and Luna 39). These organisms look like the cytokensis stage of mitosis, because they are connected in the middle, but looked like two separate cells.
I did identify a new organism which is what I believe to be the chlamydaster, or it could possibly be the nuclearia (Patterson 172 & 83 ). The book said that the two are easily confused with each other. Other than that one organism, there were no new organisms; however, there were a lot of organism missing. My hypothesis is that the organism who did not need the food pellet are the ones who survived. After I put the food pellet in my aquarium, I started seeing many different organism, and when I accidentally put the food pellet in for the second time, I saw the same organisms, but they moved to the side where the food pellet was, which I purposefully placed the food on opposite sides to see if the organism would move with the food, which I was correct, they did as I suspected. The organism that were left were the annelid, which this week there were two outside of the muck versus last week when there was only one, a few rotifers, but not many, some flat worms, multiple coleochaete, and a few Cyclops. There were four annelids total, which is one more than last week. I believe that the annelids are coming out of the much to eat the algae growing on the plants, because they were all over plant B which is covered in green algae. What I believe is that the organisms that are living are the ones who can fed off of the algae. The midge and the vorticella were the main organisms that I noticed were gone, which those organism usually stayed around the food pellet, so it would make sense that they would die off when I stopped placing food in the aquarium.

Work Cited:

Canter-Luna, Hilda, and John Luna. Freshwater Algae: Their microscopic world explored. 2nd. Bristol, England: Biopress LTD , 1995. 23. Print.
Patterson, D.J. Free Living Freshwater Protozoa. London: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1996. Print.

4th Observation

During my observation this past week I discovered that my micro aquarium was almost completely different from the first day I observed it. There were a few new organisms, but mostly the previously existing organisms themselves had changed considerably.
The annelid that I had stumbled upon on my second observation has not only reproduced again since last week when I had observed two different ones in contrast to the one that I saw the second week, but it also was found outside of the muck, which was the first time I had observed that since the first week. The annelid was around plant B and was feeding off of the algae growing on it. The annelids that still remained in the muck were around the edge and on the verge of coming outside of the muck.
Last week I had placed another food pellet in the aquarium, but this time instead of placing the pellet around plant B I placed the pellet around plant A. My theory for doing this was to see if by placing food around plant A would draw more organisms over to the plant. In the first two weeks all the activity was mostly around plant B. This past week since I had placed the food pellet on the opposite side of the aquarium where all the activity was, the organism moved to that side of the aquarium. The second observation I had, there were tons of vorticella surrounding the pellet. This past week when I placed the food pellet on around plant A, the vorticella left plant B and moved to the other. The vorticella completely left plant B and were all on plant A whereas the week before it was just the opposite.
I noticed that there were a lot of algae in the aquarium, the easiest to identify was the spirogyra (Smith 299-300). The spirogyra was around both plants and I could tell by stalks with what looks like green spiral staircases. Both plants were full of algae, but plant B had the most. I couldn’t identify what the alga was, but it was very thick and could be seen by the naked eye. I am curious as to whether the increase in algae on plant B is due to the lack of activity and organisms surrounding it. The organisms feed off of the algae, and since they are no longer around plant B, the algae will eventually begin to back up, which is what I believe is start to back up.
There were a few new organisms that I was able to identify during my observation period. The most interesting one was a new rotifer I located which was the Collotheca Rotifer. This rotifer has cilia around the opening of its mouth and when disturbed, it coils up and closes. It is a slow process when it comes back out, but it will slowly inch forward and then once it is fully stretched out, it will open its mouth. I watched it eat several organisms, its prey is protozoa and rotifers (Stemberger 44-45) and it makes a similar movement like it does when it is disturbed except it does not curl up. It closes its mouth slowly trapping its food inside. Another interesting organism was the cyclopoid naupluis (Smith 490), which is a spider like organism. I didn’t get to see the organism move, so I don’t know its movement, but it is a transparent looking organism with spider like legs. I saw two different amoebas, the first I couldn’t exactly identify it, but I know it is an amoeba that forks by its forking movement. The other was a difflugia amoeba which looks almost like a hermit crab (Patterson 96). It creates a hard shell out of pieces of debris and it has little arms at one point it has three different arms and then changed to two but it can change the number, size, and shape of its arms.
This week I did not add a food pellet, but I did add water.
Work Cited:
Smith, Gilbert. Freshwater Algae of the Unites States. 2nd. New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1950. 299-300. Print.
Stemberger, Richard. A Guide to Rotifers of the Laurentatian Great Lakes. 44-45. Print.
Patterson, D.J. Free Living Freshwater Protozoa. London: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1996. 96. Print.
Smith, Douglas. Pennak's Freshwater Invertebrates of the U.S.. 4th. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 490. Print.

Week 3

This past week when I went to observe my micro aquarium, I found many new organisms and multiple of previously existed. Last week I discovered annelid that could be found in the muck at the bottom of the aquarium. This week, I found possibly 2 if not 3 stylaria annelids found in the same location. When observing the annelids, they were all eating which was understood by the contraction of their stomachs. I have yet to observe these organisms in a location other than in muck. Another organism that was found last week that multiplied was the vorticella, however, the location was different this week from the last. Last week the vorticella could be found anchored to the stems of plant B, and there were only a few that I spotted. This observation, the vorticellas were mostly found around the food pellet. This difference between the last observation and this past one was the vorticella were not anchored down, they were erratically placed freely around the food pellet. The number of vorticella tripled if not quadrupled. There were still many rotifer and Cyclops like last week. The rotifer and Cyclops move so random and freely, that it is hard to tell if they are reproducing, or if I am observing the same rotifer 3 or 4 times.
I noticed that this week my plant stems were turning a little more brown, which leads me to believe that they are dying. Plant A is in much worse shape than plant B. Almost all of my plant A is brown, and there is less activity that happens around plant A than the other. Plant B had a few brown spots in it, but most of the stems were very much green and alive. A lot of the stems were cluttered with diatoms. Dr. McFarland identified rizoids, a moss, which was anchored to plant B. The rhizoids looked like flowers growing out of the stem. There were several desmids, single cell algae also surrounding plant B.
Despite the growth in previously existing organisms, there were also many new organisms that were discovered in my observation. I discovered new organisms that Dr. McFarland identified as flat worms, which was a transparent looking organism, moving freely through my aquarium. These worms could be found anywhere in the aquarium. Another new found organisms was the dixa midge (Ward, and Whipple). These organisms are long, skinny, and moved freely, but they actually have what looks like a face. On the head, there are 2 black dots that are the eyes, and red at the mouth area, they almost resembled a sock monkey.
Before leaving the lab, I placed 1 Atison's Betta Food pellet in the aquarium, but this time instead of placing it near plant B, I have placed it around plant A to see if next week there will be more activity around plant A versus plant B. After placing the food pellet in the aquarium, I filled the rest of the aquarium up with water.

Worked Cited:
Ward, Henry, and George Whipple. Freshwater Biology. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998. Print. (Ward, and Whipple).
Atison's Betta Food" 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%.