Week 5 Observations

I found that a vast majority of the microorganisms in my microaquarium were dying off.  This is most likely due to the lack of food available after the pellet was eaten.  I have gotten some good photos of some of the microorganisms.  I took pictures of a cladocerans (water flea), lecane, thacysoma, and an ostracoda (seed shrimp).


According to the book Guide to Microlife by Kenneth G. Reinis and Bruce J. Russel the above image is a cladoceran or in other words a water flea.

 
According to the book Guide to Microlife by Kenneth G. Reinis and Bruce J. Russel the organism above is a lecane.


According to the book Free-Living Freshwater Protozoa by DJ Patterson the organism pictured above is a tachysoma.



According to the book Guide to Microlife by Kenneth G. Reinis and Bruce J. Russel the above organism is an ostracoda or in other words a seed shrimp.

Week 4 Observations

This was a good week of observations.  I found a few other curious looking microorganisms in my microaquarium, but the one that intrigued  me the most was a Cyclops.  I did get a few pictures of the cyclops and a few other microorganisms, but they are not ready for posting yet and will come in next weeks blog.  I also observed the microorganisms feeding on the beta fish pellet that we put in last week and found that to be quite interesting.  They were really tearing that pellet apart.  That's all for this week and I will have pictures up during next weeks blog post.

Week 3 Observations

During this week I saw a paramecium in my microaquarium.  The beta fish pellet that was put into the microaquarium last week on Friday October 29, 2010 has been partially eaten by the microorganisms in the microaquarium.  More information about the beta fish pellet are as follows:  "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%.

Week 2 Observations

This week of my observations in my microaquarium I saw 2 amoeba.  I also saw another single celled organism that I could not quite identify for it was moving very quickly throughout the microaquarium and I only caught a glimpse of it.  Hopefully I will be able to identify this organism in next weeks observation.  I also saw a few other smaller organisms, but could not quite make out what they were either.  I hope to have those identified in next weeks observations as well.

Day 1 of Project

During the first day of the project we put together our microaquariums.  The way that we put them together was by taking the microaquarium and filling it up with 1 of 12 different water types.  I used water type number 12.  First I put the soil from number 12 in the bottom of the aquarium.  Then I put water from the middle into the aquarium.  And then I put the water from the surface at the top of my aquarium.  After all of that I then put 2 different kinds of plants into the aquarium.
Once the aquarium was put together I then took a look at it under the microscope and found a few different microorganisms.  One of them was purple and going really fast around the aquarium.  Another was pretty big and it was brownish green.  And that one just kind of spun around.  And the other that I saw was just racing by like it was in a hurry to go places.