October29, 2009 observations

This week in lab my initial observations were as followed: the water was clearer than last week, probably because of the time of a week for it to all settle down. The food pellet (beta fish food) has shrunk, so I think it has been eaten. Also, it has sunk to the bottom of the micro-aquarium where all the sediment is. My algae plants looked the same and were still as green as last week.

Under the observation microscope I noticed a little less movement of organisms around the aquarium. There seemed to be less diversity also. My hypothesis is that many of the organisms died and/or were eaten.

And under the microscope I noticed and tried to label all the organisms I saw. First of all, I saw and researched an annelida specifically known as Aeolosome leidyi. It was a long, slender annelida which moved like a average earthworm would move. It would bunch up, then spread out to move around. It was transparent and I could see many little, red dots inside of it;mainly on the edges of it. It had a round head and long cilia along the length of its body to aid in movement and I could see debris being moved by the cilia as it moved. Pretty cool because I had no idea that occured in the little few drops of water. I also noticed colonial algae floating around. Another organism that I encountered was the chilomonas. They have oval shaped bodies covered entirely with cilia. They are slow movers and kind of float around with no apparent rhyme or reason as I noticed. Also, I noticed the didinium, which were very fast movers. They moved with their tails and somehow reminded me of the horseshoe crab. They have the same looking tail configuration I think and same body shape. They were a little bigger than the chilomonas, yet both were smaller than the Aeololsome leidyi. I saw alot less diversity in my aquarium, yet I saw in detail the organisms that did thrive in my mirco-aquarium and I look forward to seeing them live and interact in the future