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.