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!
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