Final Day

Today was the last day observing my microaquarium™.  Surprisingly enough I found my midge again!  The cyclops is still alive and I also saw another worm like creature that was see through and had cilia up and down its body. There were other small organisms still swimming around in the tank, but like the previous days, life is declining for sure.   This was a fun experiment, spent a lot of time in the lab, but now it is time to write my lab report and wrap this semester up!

Day 4: Nothing much

On my fourth week observing my aquarium, I am noticing that there really is not much to see anymore.  I do not know what happened to all my little organisms but they aren't there anymore!  Since my Cyclops is still alive, I think I'll blame it for eating all of the other ones.  Or maybe the fish food?  I'm not sure, but there was something that caught my eye, though I think it was just an attachment on one of my plants. 

Just something very interesting.  The part that caught my eye was the small head looking part of this bulge, and the little dots inside that.  It almost looks like a brain! 
The next picture is of a filamentous green alga, I am not sure which one but I will figure it out!

I love the bright green in it and since I wasn't able to find much else, I thought I would capture this.  And last but not least is something I've found this Cyanobacteria, Merismopedia sp. that is shaped like small squares.

I thought it was pretty sweet and I've been watching these since the beginning of lab!  So that is all for now, I'm hoping that i will be able to find something else before this is over, but we'll see.

Day 3

This weeks lab time was not very eventful.  Though we did add Atison's Betta Foodsome to our tanks it did not seem to change much. The food is made by Ocean Nutrition, Aqua Pet Americas, in Salt Lake City, UT. The ingredients include: 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%. (McFarland, 2012)  

There were many little organisms floating around this time, which came from the added food.  They were swimming very fast and there were probably thousands of them.  One of the bigger things I saw was a Cyclops. It is a micro invertebrate and is shaped kind of like a little lobster.  Another interesting thing I noticed was the fact that the Vorticella sp.  had tripled in number throughout the tank. (Patterson, 2003) Seemingly smaller than before but I also was not as close as I was before.  Probably the most interesting creature I found was the Midge.  It was very large and I could actually see it with my own eyes, and then once I looked through the microscope I could see inside of it.  It is segmented, and is considered an insect larvae.  It would go through the dirt and come up to feed on the Amblestegium sp. plant and the organisms formed on the plant.  It was so interesting to watch it feed, since it had a mouth and appeared to be chomping on the branches and it's "chin" has little hairs or cilia on it.  It kind of reminded me of a muppet, although it is very different!  Other than that, my tank was not as interesting and also I could not find my mystery creature.  But I will try again and hopefully get to identify it.
 

Day 2: Surprises in the Tank

Tuesday October 23 turned out to be very interesting! After almost three hours in the lab I discovered many different organisms and named a couple.  The outward appearance of the tank did change a little bit.  The dirt in the bottom made a little cloud mass right above the bottom and when I moved the water around it didn't shift.  So I decided to take a closer look and discovered that it appeared to be like a small root system.  I didn't identify it, but that is what it looks like.  

The next thing I did was scan the tank under the microscope.  One of the first organisms I ran across was the Vorticella sp. (Patterson, 2003).

Protozoa, Peritrichs: Oligohymenophora (Patterson, 2003)

 You can see the cilia on the bell, and they are blurry cause they're moving so fast.  If I tapped the glass of the tank it would contract at the stalk back into itself and the dirt. Vorticella sp. are single cell organsims, and their common, filter feeders that eat bacteria (Patterson, 2003). They have weath-like cilia around the broad part of the cell, or the "bell shape" (Patterson, 2003).

The next thing I found was a Spirogyra floating around in the water.  The colors here are very vivid green, which make it a green alga, and obviously the spirals are very distinct (McFarland, 2012).  Just another good find for me!   

Spirogyra

But the best thing I've discovered so far is my mystery organism.  The reason I say mystery is because I have yet to find something that will classify it.  

 It is very much alive, and when we disrupted the tank he retracted all the way inside his body.  Upon first glance we came to the conclusion it was a rotifer just a different type. (Stremberger, 1979)  But when I went back in the lab, I decided to continue trying to identify it and leave it as a mystery for now.  
More to come!
p.s (nov. 21, 2012) I think we decided it was a Hydra sp.  I wish I could have been able to further investigate it but I never could find it again!

Bibliography

Day 1:

Botany 111 Fall 2012 (Blog). Watersource: 7. University of Tennessee Hospital (cited 2012 October 23).  Available from: http://botany1112012.blogspot.com/
Cite- (McFarland, 2012) 

Day 2:

Patterson DJ. 2003. Free-Living Freshwater Protozoa. 2nd ed. London (UK): Academic Press. p. 113. Fig. 233 (cited 2012 October 25)

Stremberger Richards. 1979. A guide to Rotifers of the Laurentian Great Lakes. Cincinnati (OH): Academic Press. p. 126-127. (cited 2012 October 25)

 Day 3

Botany 111 Fall 2012 (Blog). Foodsource: Atison's Betta Food. Made by Ocean Nutrition, Aqua Pet Americas (cited 2012 November 2).  Available from: http://botany1112012.blogspot.com/ 

Day 4

Graham Linda E. 2000. Algea. Upper Saddce River (NJ): Academic Press. 241 p. 

Day 1: The Set Up

Wednesday my lab finally got to create our Micro-aquarium™ term project. I am very excited to discover what is floating around in my little tank and see how each organism works!  I decided to use the pond water from the University of Tennessee Hospital because I thought it may prove to be full of life, with the storm sewer sediment supplying the pond.  The pond has full sun exposure and the water was collected on Oct. 9, 2011 at Cherokee Trail. Knox Co. Knoxville (GPS:N35 56.305 W83 56.717 850 ft). (McFarland, 2012).

UT Hospital Pond

   The first day we just assembled the aquariums and added our water and plants.  I chose to add both of the plant specimens, I added mostly Amblestegium sp. which is a moss, and has partial shade exposure.  It was collected from Natural spring at Carters Mill Park, Carter Mill Road, Knox Co. TN. (McFarland, 2012) and I also decided to put one strand of Utricularia gibba L. in as well. It is a flowering carnivorous plant (McFarland, 2012).

My Micro-Aquarium™tank

Once the tank was assembled I put it under a microscope to observe what is happening in the beginning of the four weeks.  There were some small white organisms that I could see with my eyes and no microscope, but being up close is much better.  There were many little green dot organisms that moved rapidly around in the water, and appeared to be "attacking" the larger organisms.  The most interesting thing I saw was four horn shaped organisms that appeared to just grow out of the sediment.  They had cilia that were around the bell shape and they would move back and forth like they were in a windy field.  Unfortunately I did not get to identify them, but next week's observation should help me figure it out.

Bibliography

Botany 111 Fall 2012 (Blog). Watersource: 7. University of Tennessee Hospital (cited 2012 October 23).  Available from: http://botany1112012.blogspot.com/