Blog 4 Week 4

Good evening one and all, well, here is my last post for our project sad isn't it? But hey, I have added a ton of pictures for my final blog. Interestingly enough almost all of my pictures are taken from along the edges of my aquarium there seemed to be an abundance of microlife along there.

I am going to have to ask patience because at the moment I can not for the life of me find my note book giving all the references though I can have Dr, Macfarland attest that I did so because I worked with him on a bunch of these.

Just below is an amoeba which are just fascinating. They move via their cytoplasmic movement with in. It almost looks like it is just oozing and flowing down a hill when it moves. I had not really taken into account that this could be an organism at first because if you don't watch for a little they don't move fast enough to catch your eye. Which I have found to be true of many of these organisms.




The next two pictures are of a green alga called chladophora it is a filamentous alga that has over the weeks been growing rapidly. Interestingly enough this is due to getting sunlight. Which is why the micro aquariums have had to be kept in a darker room so the alga don't take over.


These little guys in the next couple pictures are cyanobacteria. I couldn't get a close enough shot but if you were to get close you would see they are green in color. At first I just thought they didn't moved but they I noticed they sort of drift along. Very cool.Now this guy is very interesting. We are not a hundred percent sure but we are pretty sure it is a diffluga. It sticks this long almost tongue shaped cilliate out and inches itself along.


Here is a picture from the internet showing it (http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://protist.i.hosei.ac.jp/PDB/Images/Sarcodina/Difflugia/Difflugia.jpg&imgrefurl=http://protist.i.hosei.ac.jp/PDB/Images/Sarcodina/Difflugia/index.html&h=378&w=513&sz=35&tbnid=rizNqpHH2-AJ::&tbnh=97&tbnw=131&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddifflugia&hl=en&usg=__16ddGANH9yQHvrdLTafnB88SqHQ=&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=5&ct=image&cd=1) Once again a picture of an Arcella...
This particualar organism I think I said was something but was wrong. I looked him up in the books with the help of Dr. MacFarland but since I can't find that right now I just thought I'd say that for the record. This creature moves very, very quickly and is all over. It moves it cilliates in a circular motion and can make it self twist and turn on a blink of an eye.
This is another creature, that we never figured out it's true identity, it had that tongue like look again which moved it, but we


Finally, below are a few diatoms. The first one is a fan shaped and the other is from a different class.


I have really enjoyed doing these microaquariums. So much so I am taking mine home so I can show people and perhaps continue to look and learn about all the amazing things that can't exist in such a small space. I think Vorticella are one of my absolute favorites and will probably spend more time learning about then also make them the organis I do for my paper. Anyways, this is Suzanne signing out...

Blog 3 - Week 3

Well sports fans, (Or aquarium fans) here we are on our third week. Shall we?

To begin with lets start with a few photos from the past couple weeksHere is a picture of plant A and the damage that it sustain from being put into the Microaquarium. Causing it to dye in certain places.

On a brighter note on both plant A and B there are signs of life. There are the leaves slowly poking their heads out and also a very interesting new thing...These tiny little red tubes probably something to hold onto the substrate with.



Here is a picture of one of the plant bladders which I think are just fascinating as it is starting to shoot those little tendrils out? This is plant A or also known as a moss. I will have to ask about what those tendrils are whether roots or some means of catching things.



It is kinda hard to see but if you look at what seems to be a clear bulged that just so happens to be a Dileptus (Patterson DJ. 1996. Free-Living Freshwater Protozoa. Washington, DC: Manson Publishers, Ltd. pg. 168) The small yellow disk shape is an Arcella as well. Let's try to get a better pic of the dileptus off the internet...
This is a much better example of what it looks like (Site quoted below) The dileptus stretches out its head very far and it gets thinner as it goes but then it can retract it as it moves or while it is searching.



The organism above is an Arcella according to Dr. McFarland. It will very slowly move as it shoots out these little tendrils or more so flagella.



Very sadly here lies a dead rotifer (on top)... But there still seem to be plenty of them in the tank, they seem to still be one of the most numerous organisms. The second picture is a side shot of one them moving around. They move very quickly so it is hard to keep an eye on them.


Here are the unidentified organisms, that seem to be swarming around the plant but in reality are feeding off of a broken off piece of food.

The first picture shows the filamentous green algae and how it is spreading more and more but up closer we can see a new organism I found. It is called a Vorticella (Patterson DJ. 1996. Free-Living Freshwater Protozoa. Washington, DC: Manson Publishers, Ltd.) This creature tends to spiral itself up and extend. It constantly has cilia swirling around its mouth to propel food in. As I was looking around I found more and more of these guys.

Well I have more to add to this week in pictures but I will make a second post for that later. So life in the aquarium is ever changing and shifting.

The algae in particular seems to have grown a ton. It is definitely visible to the naked eye. It grows throught out even through the dirt which I will have a picture of later. Also I have pictures of Gastrotrichas that seem to swarm all over the tank.

But that's all folks!



Additional Sources:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.pirx.com/droplet/gallery/dileptus/dileptus1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.pirx.com/droplet/gallery/dileptus.html&h=425&w=425&sz=37&hl=en&start=2&sig2=BSEMOb1tlY9u3RmsMW832w&um=1&usg=__QORIORBX-0DodETiz1QDGicy5Ts=&tbnid=lyhN2IM0mEzAiM:&tbnh=126&tbnw=126&ei=-m0WSZG-J46a8wTw1KGGCw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddileptus%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN

Blog 2- Week 2

Well here we are onto week two.

Last week I mentioned that I thought I had euglanoids but as I was talking to Dr. McFarland and realized that the little creatures that would crawl along on the plant were actually rotifers. More commonly known as Philodina. They also seem to have increased in size and numbers, they are all over my tank.

This week, the food source was added to our tank according to our class blog it consists of : On Thursday October 4, 2008 one pellet of "Atison's Betta Food" was added to each Micro Aquaria. It is 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%.

I was really surprised by the difference! All of the microorganism seemed to swarm around this and little pieces that had been broken off. In particular there were these globs of tiny little guys, definitely juveniles of some kind. They had very jerk motions and were just swarming around the food. We will have to wait and see what they turn into. Our guess is that they might be Juvenile cillates or cladophora.

I also noticed something new...Cilliates. They were everywhere, I had seen them before but wasn't sure what they were till I was told. They are definitely increasing in number sort of like the ones that might be swarming around the food.

I also saw plant bladders that had broken off from the plant turned brown and died.

For the first time I got to use the microscope camera which was super cool! I am not sure when I will get my pictures that I took but I will added them as soon as I do. I discovered while using it these tiny little black and white worms. I will have to wait and see what they are when they get bigger, but some stayed in place and spun their tales around really fast and other moved in this S shaped pattern. I think they could be mosquito larva but we shall see. There seem like 50 or more of these little guys!

Next week I will be looking through trying to discover what all of these creatures are and then hopefully posting pictures to go along.

Another one was a round organisms that had little shoots coming out all over. It would suck them in and then spit them back out to move. We think it is an actinpshaerium of some kind. Though Dr. McFarland hadn't seen them move before but this guy definitely did.

Next there were Nematodes all over the place. Just swimming as fast as they could. They are very much like worms.

Finally, I noticed that my bright green plant, the carnivorous one seems to have spread out as if it is trying to catch more of the organisms. You can distinctly still see the bladders all through the plant.

Well, that is all for now, i am sure there will be more to come next week!

Blog 1-Week 1

Well here we go...

I used water source number 4 and then used both Plant A and Plant B to set up my aquarium being careful to get enough dirt but not too much. The water had these little green specs floating in it, I am not sure what they are yet, but they are kinda odd.

To the naked eye I couldn't see much of anything moving in the water, there was something very small and clear jumping around very quickly.

I was absolutely amazed when we started to look at the aquariums under the microscopes the first day. (Oct. 15th) I got to see a few almost heart shaped organisms with flagella swimming around probably about 4 or so. I now think they are a type of Euglanoid which is a type of freshwater Algae that flips around and actually will crawl along the plants.
I then went on Wednesday October the 22th.

I also got to see the plant bladders on Plant B, that apparently will swallow the microorganisms and eat them, kinda sad but really cool to think about. You can also see the curled ends of the plants which are called fiddle heads.

I also got to see a couple cyclops that had these two tiny bright red eyes and the tendrils sticking out the front of it, one of them were not moving and just passively floating, but another one was darting all over the place.

Then I got to see these long thin green strips of Green Alga that had all of these tiny sections could have been something like green Filamentas Alga.

There were several yellow circular organisms. One was definitely cellular and moved ever so slowly every now and then almost twitched about, but we are not sure what it was, it could be something like a tachysoma. Then there were other yellow disks that had these 4 little dark spots in it, maybe a pollen grain because it wasn't moving?

I also saw this spinning thing that Dr. MacFarland identified as a rotifer carcass attached to a small dark circular organism that we didn't know what it was that was cause the carcass to spin like that.

There was also this worm looking creature that did not move in an S shaped motion but instead seemed to curl up or perhaps inch along. Still unsure as to what it was.

There are several very small round creatures that are too small to identify, but will hopefully grow more so we can get a better idea of what they are.

It looks like there could be some cillates such as paramecium. But we will keep an eye out for those as they get more visible

So that pretty much sums up my first week.