November 12

This is a video i made last week of the rotifer G. Limnias. Limnias is a sessile (lives attached to a surface) in tubes of mucus or pellets. the corona or crown of cilia are four lobed. Info from: Rotifers by Joset Donner.

A lot of water has evaporated from my Microaquarium since last week and it is know only about half full. The number of organisms has also drastically decreased since last week and i only saw a few organisms. Tachysoma #'s are down and i was able to see approximately 35 of them today. Phacus algae are the most abundant organism still alive and replace the tachysomas which were most abundant for the past few weeks. Gastrotrich are still living and i observed about 20 of them. The last organisms still found consisted of about 12 Rotifers. All of the Rotifers Gastrotriches and Tachysomas seem to have lost a lot of mass from the previous weeks. Considering that these organisms look smaller and that the Phacus algea is now the most abundant organism; i believe that the decline in many organisms may be due to a lack of food and starvation.

References: Donner, J. 1966. Rotifers. Frederick Warne & Co: London. p. 64

November 5

Today I spent some time taking pictures of some of the organisms present in my microaquarium. These photos should give you a much better idea of what some of the organisms I have described truly look like.

Gastrotricha. source: Freshwater Invertebrates of the United States, Protazoa to Mollusca by Robert W. Pennak









This organism is identified as a Tachysoma. source: fig 264 and 265 in the book Free Living Freshwater Protazoa by D.J. Patterson









This round green organism is identified as phacus curvicauda, a green algae. source: fig 6 in the book How to Know the Fresh-water Algae by G.W. Prescott

The last photo is what a Rotifer looks like while swimming. The neat impellar like structure will emerge from the right side of this Rotifer when it feeds.

october 29

The number of Rotifers has increased drastically since last weeks observation. The most abundant identified organism in my microaquarium are still Tachysomas. The Tachysomas can be found in all regions of the microaquarium, and many of them appear to have grown a good deal since last weeks observation. There is one area of my microaquarium that has a much greater population density of Tachysoma and Rotifers. This area is at the bottom of the microaquarium and I believe it to be what is left of the food pellet inserted last week. I discovered three new organisms not previously seen in my microaquarium today, but I did not have the time to accurately identify them so ill just describe what I saw. The first organism appeared to be some sort of disk shaped algae that could move. The disk shaped object seemed to rotate so that it would appear disk shaped then line shaped. The next organism I saw was sort of carrot shaped with a dark dot at the large end. There was also a long flagella like structure that extended out of the skinny end. The object moved slowly with the flagella looking thing out in front. At one point in time a Tachysoma bumped into it and the carrot shaped body shrank up to just the size of the small dot seen at the back end. The final unidentified object I saw was the largest organism I have seen in my microaquarium. It kinda looked like a slightly opened clam with eyelash looking things coming out of one end. I look forward to trying to identify these new organisms this week.

October 22

The very first thing I noticed today looked to me like a stingray, unfortunately it moved very quickly and it was gone before I could get a good look. I searched a while for this organism but was unable to spot it again. Next I saw several almost vace shaped organisms that had two spinning pump like structures that appeared to be forcing water through itself. I believe this organism which Dr. McFarland identified as a rotifer was filtering some sort of food or nutrients out of the surrounding water like some whales filter plankton out of the ocean. I was able to determine the identity of a rod shaped organism using the book Free Living Freshwater Protozoa by D. J. Patterson. The organism called a Tachysoma was rod shaped with flagella like projections visible at the head and tail ends, there was also a clearly defined vacuole in the center of the Tachysoma. I was also able to identify the worm like organism I mentioned in the first blog using the book Freshwater Invertebrates of the United States by Robert W. Pennak. The worm like organism called a Gastrotricha is able to bend its body and has two toe-like projections coming out of the rear. In an attempt to get a very closeup look at this organism I switched to the 40x objective and almost immediately cracked the glass on the front of my microaquarium. I was able to transfer most of the water and both plants into a new microaquarium, however I did have to add a little extra water from a different source. The water I added was from source # 13.13. Plastic Bird Bath pool . 0.9 mile from Fountain City Pond on Fountain Rd. Knox Co. Knoxville TN Partial shade exposure N 36o02.249' W083o55.999' 1121 ft 10/12/2009 i also added a food pellet at the end of my observations. "Atison's Betta Food" is 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%.

References:

Patterson, D.J. (1996). Free Living Freshwater Protozoa. London: John Wiley & Sons Inc. p.125 fig. 264 & 265

Pennak, R. W. (1989). Fresh-water invertebrates of the United States: Protozoa to mollusca. New York: Wiley.

October 13

Today I set up a microaquarium in order to observe some of the many microorganisms that go unnoticed in every day life.I used water from Carter Mill Park at the spring source (Knox co.) I also added two different plants to the microaquarium.Plant A . Amblystegium varium (Hedw.) Lindb. Moss. Collection from: Natural spring. at Carters Mill Park, Carter Mill Road, Knox Co. TN. Partial shade exposure. N36 01.168 W83 42.832. 10/11/2009Plant B. Utricularia vulgaris L. Flowering. Plant. B carnivous plant. Original material from south shore of Spain Lake (N 35o55 12.35" W088o20' 47.00), Camp Bella Air Rd. East of Sparta Tn. in White Co. and grown in water tanks outside of greenhouse at Hesler Biology Building. The University of Tennessee. Knox Co. Knoxville TN.When looking through a microscope I was able to see several things. I saw a short oval shaped thing that did not change size or shape but easily moved in all directions. I also saw what I think may be a younger (smaller) form of the same organism. its movement was more erratic and turned directions more often sometimes going in circles. The last thing seen was a very fast moving black dot.