Week 4 Observation

Observing my microaquarium this past week, I was able to find some interesting things that I haven't gotten the chance to see in recent observations. Some of the organisms that reoccurred and multiplied were the euplotes and epalxis. Other organisms that were still in the microaquarium were the nematode, diatom, and duro. New organisms that I haven't seen before were the centropyxis, gomphospaeria, oedogonium, and modularic.

My microaquarium over the past five weeks has gained new organisms and lost organisms but has ultimately been a success in the production of organisms. I was especially surprised because of the fact that I dropped it and spilled it the first time looking at it after the original set-up and first observation.

Week 2 Observation

On Friday October 24, 2014 a Beta Food Pellet was put into our microaquariums. The Beta Food Pellet or "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%.

Upon observation of my microaquarium I was able to still see the organisms from last week which included an annelid, a nematode, and an euplote, along with new organisms that have accumulated. The new organisms that I saw were probably some of the ones I lost when I dropped my microaquarium and lost all of the water. These organisms were small and just floating around in the microaquarium with no real goal of staying in one place for any amount of time.

Week 1 Observation

Before starting my observation for week 1, as I was picking up my MicroAquarium it slipped out of my hand and fell to the floor. I lost almost all of the water, but was able to retrieve most of it off of the ground using a pipette to suck it up. Since I dropped it, I am sure I lost a lot of organisms that have been accumulating over the week.

Even though I spilled my aquarium, I was still able to find some pretty interesting organisms. One of which being a annelid, that was living at the bottom of the aquarium and feeding off of the plants that are in there. I also observed something that was characteristic to an annelid, a nematode that was just swimming around the aquarium, not staying in one place very long. Another was an euplote that was doing a lot of floating around within the aquarium.

Bbliography

McFarland, Kenneth [Internet] Botany 111 Fall 2014. [cited October 27, 2014]. Available from http://botany1112014.blogspot.com/

Setup and First Observations

The water source I chose for the MicroAquarium came from water sample "8"This sample came from the Tennessee River at boat ramp across from Knoxville sewer plant on Neyland Dr. in Knox County, TN. This water source is subject to full sun exposure and get fed by the French Broad and Holston Rivers water sheds. The coordinates for the site where this sample was taken from is N35 56.722 W83 55.587 at 813 ft elevation on 10/12/2014 (McFarland, 2014).

To begin the set up for this, we gathered the aquarium, stand holder, and lid. We then placed colorcoded stickers on our aquariums representing section, table, and seat number so we would be able to identify our aquariums. Next we used pipette and sucked up some of the dirt/mud that was at the bottom of the sample pan and placed it in the MicroAquarium. We then took some water from around the plants that were in the sample and also some water that was just below the surface layer, then put the water we collected in the MicroAquarium. After filling the MicroAquarium with the mud and water, we put two different species of plants into the MicroAquarium: Amblestegium varium (Hedwig) Lindberg Moss and Utricularia gibba. 

My first observations of the MicroAquarium under the mircoscope was really interesting. We could see the cell makeup of the plants that had been put into MicroAquarium along with seeing many things moving around inside. Some of the organisms looked like worms and others looked like flies that seemed to want to "run" away from the light of the micropscope.