Last and final update!

So, this is the final observation/blog post of the semester.  I hope you guys have enjoyed checkin' out my cool organisms that I have came upon the last couple of weeks.

Well, yesterday, November 14th 2012, I took another set of pictures for you all. 


The first organism is an Epalxis. These tended to swim around in a circular pattern, and it took forever for Ken and I to get a descent picture of these. (Source 5).

The second organism--An Euplote. This is probably my favorite picture I took so the whole semester. These were really cool organisms, and this one actually sat long enough for me to get a picture of. (Source 6). 

Third organism: A Halteria. There were a bunch of these organisms, mostly at the bottom of my microaquarium near the sediment. (Source 7).

The fourth organism: This organism below is called a Diffuglia. (The left) And to the right is another Euplote. The little arms you see on the diffuglia reach out around the organism and grab things to eat. I found it very interesting. (Source 8, the left..and Source 6, the right).

The fifth: This organism I have seen and blogged about before, a Seed Shrimp. But this one is finally alive! I have only seem the carcases or dead ones at the bottom so needless to say I was excited to finally see one alive. (Source 9). 

The last and final organism of my observation was a dividing cyclidium. This was pretty cool to witness! Check it out: (Source 10).

Overall, this was an interesting experience. This week in particular though, I not only got a bunch of new pictures for my blog but also realized that everything was slowing down in my microaquarium. Probably from the the lack of food. 

MicroAquarium as of 11/8/2012

Much is going on in the land of microorganisms! I know my little creatures that live in my microaquarium are just loving their home, chilling about and eating each other. It's quite interesting, I feel as if I am playing god watching them swim around and do cool things, and they obvious don't know I am there. Fun stuff!

But anyways...here's an update of my microbial friends:

Remember that Amoeba I was so interested so see last week? Well, BAM! I look and immediately I see  several chillin' there and changing shape right before my eyes. I was stoked to say the least. And when I say several, I mean A BUNCH! I literally saw about 10 or 12 all about my microaquarium, so I am pretty sure they are enjoying that food pellet I spoke of last week. Yum yum.

Along with the amoebas, once again there seems to be an abundance of Rotifers swimming around, there are so many! Too many to even count. There isn't too much to say about these creatures, except that they like to swim around in circles, haha. Pretty entertaining watching them. Besides the usual rotifer, I also saw a Philodina, which is another type of rotifer I found out, this is the first time I saw this particular type of rotifer and I only saw one.

When you scroll down to the bottom of my microaquarium, there isn't as much dead organisms as I thought there would be, thankfully! I like to see life. Anyways, there are some shells from some Seed Shrimp that have died. (R.I.P seed shrimps!).

I saw some green netted algae among my microaquarium, although there isn;t much algae in my microaquarium either, probably because my water source was the rock quarry I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. 

Recall those bubbles I found so interesting under the microscope? Well, yesterday I saw four or five bubbles in my microaquarium, pretty sweet looking at them super up close!

There was a shortage of Paramecium abundance this week, certainly not as many as I saw two weeks ago. I only saw a couple here and there swimming around. 

Diatoms are cool, especially when you see a bunch, bunched together. They seemed to chill together towards the bottom of my microaquarium right above the sediment. 

Towards the bottom of my microaquarium, I saw these two giant (which you know, where really quite small considering they were magnified) brown, weird looking egg type things, so I asked Ken what they were and he just told me they were decaying plant parts. They had holes all up in them and they were funky! Makes sense though that they were dead plant parts I guess. 

I spotted another Aeolosoma swimming around in the bottom in the sediment of my microaquarium eating some algae and what not, but this week I only saw one, whereas last week I saw several. Who knows what happened to the rest...

A new organism I found living in my microaquarium this week was a the Euplotes, I thought they were fairly interesting, due to their amount of little legs they seemed to have. I saw them everywhere in my microaquarium and wondered what they were for the longest time, then I got them identified my Ken. Cool little organisms.

Another new creature I came upon was the Diffugia, which seemed to live towards the bottom of my microaquarium and kinda looked like a piece of dirt. Now that I know what they actually are, I noticed several in my microaquarium this week. 

Last week I posted a picture of a Vorticella I came upon in my microaquarium, however this week I saw many Vorticella all among each other in a large group, probably about 8 or 9 were all grouped together. 

Towards the end of my observation, I saw a gigantic creature (compared to everything else) and decided it was a cyclops. It swam super fast and it was very hard to keep up with with the microscope. 



-That's about every organism I encountered this week, come back sometime next week to find out what creature I have came upon!

MicroAquarium Update

On October 30th 2012 I took many cool pictures of the little creatures swimming among my MicroAquarium! I took about ten, but only photoshopped four, which were the best of my findings. These pictures will be posted below and an explanation of what these organisms were doing.


I observed organisms three times this week, may I add, and immediately I noticed an drastic increase of movement in my microaquarium!! (Once before lab on October 30th, after lab of the same day, and the next, October 31st). The added movement was due to the fish food pellet that our main lab instructor, Ken McFarland placed in our microaquarium on Friday October 26, 2012. He placed only one food pellet in mine, and each of the other student's microaquarium. The single food pellet is  the brand "Atison's Betta Food" made by Ocean Nutrition, Aqua Pet Americas. The address can be found at 3528 West 500 South, Salt Lake City, UT 84104. 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%, (1 McFarland).


But first, let me tell you about some of the organisms I observed the next day, October 31st before I explain the pictures that were taken on October 30th. 

I saw an Amoeba! I watched this organism for a minute or two and watched it change shape and slowly move around. I only saw one of these organisms unfortunately, I thought they were really interesting and hopefully will see more of them in future observations. 

I also saw a couple of diatoms, which luckily I took a picture of one under a microscope with a camera.

Cute isn't it? 

It was identified by Ken McFarland, as are all of my other findings. 

I saw much more green algae among my microaquarium this week, mostly being desmids, 
and there was a lot of movement towards the bottom of my microaquarium near the dirt. 

This brings me to my next, and most interesting observation of this week.
I saw many of these snake-type organisms, called Aeolosoma. They almost scared me when I first saw them because they just suddenly started popping out of the dirt in the bottom of my microaquarium and were eating other little micro-organisms. 
Here's a picture of one of them!

They are pretty intimidating little boogers and I would stay away from them if I was a microorganism, personally. This was, like I said, identified by Ken McFarland and can be sourced back to this book: Pennak's Freshwater Invertebrates of the United States, (Source 2),(You can find the bibliography link of this blog at the very bottom with links to my sources)!

Among these micro-organisms, I saw more paramecium, which as you may remember, I saw a bunch last week just swimming around in a particular area near the bottom. Although this week I didn't see very many at all, just a couple here and there swimming about by themselves.

I saw many water fleas throughout my microaquarium, and these organisms are probably the most common living thing that have been identified in my microaquarium, they are everywhere and they are fast!

While I didn't see very many Seed Shrimps, I saw a couple of there dead carcases at bottom of my microaquarium. I managed to also get a picture of one:

I even saw one split open, which reminded me of a butterfly. The picture above, as you may notice, states that this organism is an Ostracoda, Ken wasn't sure of the species so I was instructed to only put the Class. (Source 3). 

The last picture I managed to obtain was of a Vorticella, which reminded me of a flower. 

I saw a couple of these in my microaquarium, but this was the best picture I took. The Vorticella just chilled there and didn't really move much. (Source 4). 

As I saw in last weeks observation, there were tons of rotifers swimming about in my microaquarium. Besides the water fleas, these are the most common organism I tend to see in my microaquarium.


Hopefully in next week's observation I will see even more organisms in my microaquarium! 



Bibliography Page:

http://alicekimbrell.blogspot.com/2012/10/bibliography-page.html

Like I stated above, all of my sources are here at this link above to prove my findings!