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