Week 4 Observation

This week I made my observation on Wednesday, November 12. There were some interesting things happened in my aquarium this week. Some of the missing organisms had reappeared and the number of organisms in my aquarium had increased. Cyclops disappeared two weeks ago had reappeared in the tank, I found 4 of them this week. Tiny shelled rotifers were still increasing in number. I also found about 7 gastrotiches and 5 nematodes. I was assuming that Plant B had consumed all the missing organisms, but that was not the case for the most part. I asked Dr. McFarland about the missing organisms, he told the microaquarium is a portion of the ecosystem. Every organism in the aquarium is part of the food chain. Plant B did consumed some of the bigger organisms, but not all of them were consumed by it. The larger organisms consumed the smaller ones. Eventually, the larger organisms ran out of food and died. The population of the organisms will go up and down like a roller coaster. This is happening because we disturbed the ecosystem when we extracted these organisms from their natural environment. The food pellet was added after the first week also upset the balance. The system would eventually come to a balance by repopulating the aquarium. That is the reason the number of organisms in my aquarium started to increase again.

List of organisms found:
Cyclops - 4
Gastrotrichs - 7
Nematodes - 5
Shelled rotifers - several

Below are the pictures of aeolosoma and gastrotiches.

Week 3 Observation

This week I made my observation on Thursday November 6, 2008. The water level in the tank was significantly lower than the first day it was set up. It's about 3/4 of the water left in the tank. The bacteria in the aquarium increased as usual. There seem to be less activity in my aquarium than last week. The orgainsms in my aquarium also seem to be getting less and less. Most of the non-stationary organisms in the tank are larvas and embryotic organisms. My assumption is that Plant B (Utricularia vulgaris L.), a carnovious plant I added to my tank, consumed most of the non-stationary organisms in my aquarium. The organisms I found that were left in my aquarium were several green algaes, 15 coleochaete, about 10 nematodes, about 10 daphnia, 3 gastrotrichs, and about 20 shelled rotifers larvas crawling along the plant roots.

List of organisms found:
Coleochaetes - 15
Nematodes - 10
Daphnias - 10
Gastrotrichs - 3
Shelled rotifers - 20

Below are the pictures of coleochaete and gastrotriches.

Week 2 Observation

I made two observations this week, one on Tuesday, October 28 and another one Wednesday October 29. From my observations this week, I noticed the number of the organisms had increased over the week. Diatoms and blue-green algae had multiplied significantly. They were spread all over the aquarium. There were about 20 coleochaete (one of the green algaes) I found in the aquarium compared to 7-8 coleochaete last week. I also found about 5 gastrotrichs. They have two tails and are hairy. They can be found on the middle and bottom part of the aquarium. The number of bubbles around Plant B had increased to 8-9. This week, I discovered a few new organisms in my aquarium. One of the organisms is euglena. It is a unicellular protozoa. It has a red eye and a green body. It also has chloroplast and chlorophyll a and b, which cause the body to appear green. Most of them I observed are stationary, but a few of them do move very slowly, sometimes it's really hard to tell if they are moving at all. There were about 30 euglenas I found in my aquarium, most of them on the middle part of the aquarium. I also found about 6 aeolosoma crawling on the sand on the bottom of the aquarium and on the plants. They have a clear body with red dots all over the body. Another new organism discovered was the ostracod. I found about 4 of them. They have a bean-like shell and were swimming around the middle part of the aquarium. The number of nematode and shelled rotifer had also dramatically increased. The number of nematodes had increased to about 40 and the number of shelled rotifers had increased to about 30. Nematodes swam very fast in a s-shaped motion. Both shelled rotifers and nematodes can located through out the aquarium. The strange thing is, there were about 5 cyclops in the aquarium last week, but I did not find any cyclops this week.

List of organisms found:
Diatoms - several, spread all over
Coleochaete - about 20
Gastrotrichs - 5
Euglena - about 30
Aeolosoma - 6
Ostracod - 4
Nematode - about 40
Shelled Rotifers - about 30

Below are the pictures of shelled rotifer, nematode, and green algae.

Week 1 Observation

On Wednesday,October 22, I made my week 1 observation. My microaquarium consist of type 10 water sample from Fountain City Park west of Broadway at Hotel ave. and both Plant A and Plant B were added. Plant A is Amblystegium and Plant B is a carnivous plant called Utricularia vulgaris L. From my observation, I found about 5-6 cyclops swimming around on the middle and bottom part of the aquarium. Their body is clear and the organs are visible. Several green algaes were also found under the microscope. Most of them are green and about 1-2 are yellow. Green algaes are stationary. A couple of stoneflies were swimming very fast in the aquarium and were hard to focus on them under the microscope. There were about 5-6 shelled rotifer crawling along the plants. I found about 3 diatoms swimming slowly around the aquarium. Several dots spread through out the aquarium that look like bubbles were identified as bacterias. There were about 5-6 bubbles formed around Plant B. Organisms in the aquarium including cyclops, stoneflies, and shelled rotifer seemed to be consuming off algaes. Most of the bugs in the aquarium have clear body and organs. I watched several of them consumed a piece of algae and digest it through their visible organs. The red worm from last week's observation had disappeared. I assume it is dead and consumed by other organisms in the aquarium.

List of organisms found:
Cyclops - 5-6
Green Algaes - Several
Stoneflies - 2
Shelled rotifers - 5-6
Diatoms - 3

Below is a picture of diatoms.

Microaquarium Set Up

The microaquarium was set up on Tuesday 10/14. I used sample water #10 and added both plant A and plant B to my aquarium. The first thing I observed under the mircroscope was a red worm crawling around on the bottom of the aquarium (also visible without the microscope). I also observed several circular single celled organisms (green algae?) that look like tiny bubbles moving in circular motions in the middle of the aquarium. I look around the aquarium and found about 5-6 insects that I assumed are the adult water bugs and water mites.