Micro Aquarium: Day 29

So, this is the last week of my MicroAquarium project. Things are grim. I don't if this is supposed to happen, or if my tank was just poisoned, but It seems like my aquarium is getting less and less populated. I expected it to be teeming with life by the end of the 5 weeks, but diversity seems to be shrinking constantly. The only new things I found in my tank this week were *Paramecium Bursaria, (and there were many of them) and a **Philidina sp. Rotifer, which resembled the anchored, spinning sifter organisms I observed in my first week--but larger. And this one was hiding in a dirt cocoon type structure. It reminded me of the anemones of the ocean, that come out of their tubes, but when any movement or sign of danger occurs, the shoot back inside. When I tapped the glass, this Philidina sp. Rotifer would shoot back into its cocoon thing, then slowly creep back out and start sifting food particles again.
Speaking of cocoons, my insect larva friend is back. I don't know if its the same one, but it looks like it. However this time, the majority of his body is wrapped in a cocoon/shell/tube thing that looks like the dirt/sand particles from the tank webbed together. I don't know is this is an instinctive defense mechanism for blending in with the dirt when fish swim by, or if he's actually building a cocoon to transform in, but since he has no use for wings underwater, i don't think that's the case.
Lastly, the Closterium sp. have decreased a bit in population, some of them are several times longer than before, and a few are dead. There are much less of the Turbellaria and I found no amoebas. However, the regular Rotifers are still swarming, they seem to be the dominating species of the tank, because they are always prevalent. I found only one Cyclops, and it was dead. There were also a few Diatoms, which are slow moving yellow rods. I have seen them in previous weeks but only now photographed and identified them.
Now for the photos:

The large brown thing is the cocoon structure it was hiding in. The picture is
blurry because it was moving a lot, but you can see the "teeth" at the head of
this organism that look like they're spinning. Those are the food sifters.

Here is the insect larva, and you can see the cocoon structure around it. At
first I thought the larva was hatching from the cocoon but couldn't get out,
until he turned inside out of the cocoon and I realized he had full control and
mobility, and he was carrying the cocoon around with him by choice.

This is a diatom, a quite boring organism. According the Dr.
McFarland, there should be more detail of interesting-looking
structure inside the diatom, but I was having a hard time with my microscope.

MicroAquarium: Day 22

So, my aquarium is not growing very much. There are a lot more Closterium everywhere, but many are dead. They are missing a lot of their green and are not moving, and there are tiny organisms buzzing around them looking like they're feeding off them. The rotifers are swarming, they need to be killed because they're everywhere, and the cyclops have disappeared  or are hiding very well now. I also couldn't find my little insect larvae friend, I was hoping he would be a butterfly by now, but I bet the rotifers overwhelmed him and ate him up like pirahnas. There are still many of the turbellaria things, and more of those organisms related to them (that are more serpentine and grow much longer.) I also found quite a bit more amoebas than last time, I don't know if they're more populated this time, or if I just know what to look for, but I found several, and they seemed to like to be in pairs or groups. Some of them also had slight colored tints like red or blue to them--quite lovely.

Anyway, nothing too new this week, hopefully my insect is in a cocoon transforming into something beautiful. Until next week,

That is all.

MicroAquarium: Day 16

I will first begin by saying that last Friday (day 11) one Beta Food Pellet was added to my MicroAquarium:

Atison's Betta Food" 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%. 

Anyway, not many changes have occured since my last observation. I've found a few new species, and some of the older ones are much larger now, like the serpent-like ones. Some of them have grown over 10 times their length since my last observation. I've also discovered some insect larva. One of them was easy to watch (however it is a shadow for most of the video because I didn't not know how to adjust my light aperture), but the other was hiding in the dirt and moved super fast, so it was not possible to get  photo or video.

I discovered a type of protist characterized by the constriction ring right along its center, and the floating crystals in the tips of both ends of the organism. They float around very slowly, and are probably autotrophic because of their bright green color and the fact that other organisms seemed to feed off of them when they died. * They are in the genus Closterium, but I could not identify the exact species.

I also identified those cricket-like quick darting organisms. They are called Cyclops, according to Dr. McFarland, and I only managed to get a photo of one because it was not moving much--either dying or tired. 

 Also, according to Dr. McFarland, the little tadpole-like creatures that were everywhere are Rotifers, and the worm-like ones are Turbellaria. I do not know if the worm-like Turbellaria are the same thing as the long serpentine ones, just not fully grown. They might be related but not the same...

And lastly, I found amoeba. These were difficult to spot because they are transparent, but I happened to stumble across a pair. You can see little particles floating around in them, and the amoeba just look like spilled liquid that changes form. I think amoeba either like to be together, or they reproduce asexually and their offspring are just a piece of the parent amoeba that is broken off and grows independently, because in my entire MicroAquarium I only found two of them and they just happened to be right next to eachother.

 

You can see all the little particles moving throughout the amoebas body.

Anyway. Hope to see more next week. That's all folks!

  

*Rainis, Kenneth G.; Russell, Bruce J. Guide To Microlife. Danbury, CT. Franklin Watts Publishing, 1996. P. 136.

MicroAquarium: Day 10

So, a terrible tragedy has occured. As I was placing my MicroAquarium on the micrscop stand, i dropped it, and a lot of the water spilled out! The dirt, plants, and water near the bottom remained inside, but I think killed half of my protist population. You're all invited to the funeral this Sunday. but i refilled the tank with regular water and hopefully there are enough survivors of each species to repopulate the tank.
Anyway, the survivors of this catastrophe were mostly the organisms that reside near the dirt. I saw many new organisms and not many of the ones I saw last week (perhaps because I killed them all). But the new ones included these brownish, long worm-like organisms that moved in a wavy serpentine fashion by expanding and contracting. They seemed unsociable with other protists because every time one of the worm-like organisms and some other organism cme close to eachoter, they would dart away from eachother. At one point, a worm thing and some other protist bumped into eachother and the worm's head contorted into a wide, flat shape and it shot back far away while the other protist scurried away so fast i thought it just disappeared.
The protists I saw last week that were anchored in place but sifted particles were not here anymore. The large, fast, cricket-like ones however were. And they seem larger now than last week. The most popular protist though was this medium/small sized tadpole thing that moved at a medium pace. They were everywhere. That's all for now.

MicroAquarium Day 1: Set-up and Initial Observation

The first piece of my Micro Aquarium is the "tank," which is two small glass rectangles with a few mm of space between them. This space is sealed along the edges on three sides, with the fourth, open side being the top. I placed the tank in its glass base, open side up, and labeled my tank. Then, I got my sample of water (sample 1) which is from *Tommy Schumpert Pond in the Seven Islands Wildlife Refuge, and put a few drops of dirt from that sample into my tank. I filled the rest of the tank with my sample water. Then I added pieces of two aquatic plants: moss (**plant A) and a carnivorous flowering plant (***plant B) into the tank, and observed my MicroAquarium through a microscope.

* Tommy Schumpert Pond, Seven Islands Wildlife Refuge, Kelly Lane , Knox Co. Tennessee. Partial shade exposure Sheet runoff around sink hole. N35 57.256 W83 41.503 947 ft 10/10/2010





**(Plant A) Fontinalis sp. Moss. Collection from: Natural spring. at Carters Mill Park, Carter Mill Road, Knox Co. TN. Partial shade exposure. N36 01.168 W83 42.832. 10/10/2010

***(Plant B) Utricularia gibba L. Flowering plant. A carnivous plant. Original material from south shore of Spain Lake (N 35o55 12.35" W088o20' 47.00), Camp Bella Air Rd. East of Sparta Tn. in White Co. and grown in water tanks outside of greenhouse at Hesler Biology Building. The University of Tennessee. Knox Co. Knoxville TN. 

All the plant samples, water samples, and the information about them were provided by Dr. Kenneth McFarland in his blog at http://botany1112010.blogspot.com/



Now, onto my observations:

I saw many organisms, some stationary, some moving. There were several small jellyfish-looking organisms that looked like they were anchored in place, but their body would stretch around and snatch little particles out of the water surrounding, and they had small, quick-moving fibers around them that I think either helped them move or helped them sift the particles out of the water. Another type of organism was a small slow-moving protists that attached to the plants and seemed to be feeding on it. Its body was stretching and compressing like a water balloon and it would slowly work its way along the fibers of the plant. I also so large long-ish quick moving organisms that were so fast it was hard to keep up with them through my microscope lens. They darted in quick spurts like hopping grasshoppers. They seemed to thrust forward by a few long fibers on their sides (cilia?) that would push through the water like someone rowing a boat. The last type of organism I witnessed were small, round things with a flagellum that move at a medium pace (relative to the quick darting ones or the slow plant-attached ones.)
There seemed to be less of the anchored particle-sifting organisms than the rest. There were about equal numbers of the other types of organisms.