Week 4: The last obeservation

Well this is the final observation for this MicroAquarium. From Week 3 til now (Week 4) there are still as many Rodifers as there were last week, but some organisms did die. One nemotode and about 10-15 Arcella were in the bottom of the tank. The cyanobacteria, on the other hand though, exploded. In addition, there several fragments and pieces of cyanobacteria everywhere in the tank. There were also clumps of cyanobacteria everywhere, like the picture to the left. They also seem to stay near the flowering plant in the middle of the tank possibly for photosynthesis purposes. The moss has declined slightly in size probably due to all the different organisms feeding off of it. One more thing about the Arcellas, they are different from the other organisms in that they are found throughout the entire tank and even though some of them died, for the most part they multiplied greatly. The vorticella(Patterson and Hedley pg 113 Fig 233) are extremely interesting to watch eat because they contract then release to digest food. The Chilonomas and Colpidiums are still just as numerous as ever and the huge Philodonia is still alive and well. The Peranema are still alive and doing the same thing they were last week and the week before. The dinoflagelates are still numerous as well. Fiunally, the Phacus and Euglena are still thriving and innumerable as ever.

Overall, the population increased and thrived. The most prominent and prosperous were the larger organisms, such as the Rodifers and Nemotodes. The exceptions to this are the cyanobacteria, the Colpidiums, and the Chilonomas, which are extremely tiny, but as mentioned before they were sitll very numerous. Also stated before is that the Arcellas lost some of their own but for the most part multiplied tremendously. The only organisms that did not have a dramatic change were the Phacus and Euglena and the moss and flowering plant in the tank. Everything else increased in size, even if they did lose some of their own species. I never knew that there were so complex ecosystems in water. I have learned so much from this interesting and informative observation over this past month.

MicroAquarium Observation Week 3

It's Week 3 of the observation and I've noticed a slight very slight decrease in Colpidiums in the tank, but they are still rapidly and randomly moving everywhere. I also noticed that the randomly, moderately moving Chilonomas stayed about the same, while the mainly stationary photosynthetic cyanobacteria nearly doubled in number. The very large Philodina is still alive and moving around just as swiftly as ever. There is still an innumerable amount of Phacus and Euglena (pg 146, Rainis and Russell) in the tank. In addition, there are also still several slow-moving large, orange, and round Arcella(First picture at the top) (Figure 173 pg 91 Patterson and Hedley) in the microaquarium. There were some new discoveries in the tank this week. One of the few new discoveries in the tank was all the different kind of dinoflagellates, such as Peridium cinctum (Figs 980-983 pg 308, Tiffany and Britton). They swim randomly and moderately fast. In addition, there were many, many Rodifers(third picture from the top) in the tank. These are somewhat big in size and they swim around relatively fast and dig under the dirt and they like to swim in the dirt as well. There were also many flagellates, Peranema(Fig 71 pg 52 Paaterson and Hedley) mainly, and they were attacking an organism that was unidentifiable because they wouldn't move away from the organism so it could be indentified. The cyanobacteria that was mentioned earlier had two different varieties in the tank. Below are some pictures of the different species of cyanobacteria. One species was not easily identified but they were J-shaped with what look like heterocists on the end of their tails(pictured above to the immediate left and the second picture from the top)[taken in the lab]) and the other species was identified as Nostoc carneum (the fourth picture from the top) (pg 407 figure 642 Handbook of Algae) they have a ball in the middle of their bodies. I apologize for the disarray of the pictures. This happened because my computer keeps freezing up when i try to move them.