Week 5

This week about 1,000 new rotifers had appeared. They were swimming haphazardly in every direction. A noticed a new variety of flatworm. This one was a more brown color than clear, and its body was segmented. I saw dead bodies of two copepods. They were sitting on the algae lifelessly. I found an organism that had a bright red center in it. The dirt from the bottom of the aquarium has been scattered all around. The most interesting thing this week was a large mass of colpts that seemed to be absorbing nutrients from a dead flatworm. There were hundreds of them swimming in a clump around the body, moving it back and forth. The algae had formed circular heads.

Week 4 Observations

This week,life was a little more interesting in my aquarium. My friend the cyclops had returned (it was still a smaller one than before) and I was able to identify some more specimens. First off, I recognized the Charophycea Spirogyra since we had discussed it in class. It took up quite a bit of my aquarium with its filaments. The small, ciliated protozoa were swimming around. Also, my flatworms were so big I could see them without the microscope. This was incredibly disgusting yet enlightening, as i realized these have become my favorite organism to watch. Their heads are triangle shaped at the very top and they seem to have many flagella propelling them through the water. Upon further study I learned flatworms are derived from the phyla Platyhelminthes, and more specifically, the ones in my aquarium are the planarian, class tubellaria (http://staff.tuhsd.k12.az.us/gfoster/standard/zophyla1.htm#flat). Another algae I noted was chlamydomonas. It is circular and apparently very common (http://www.chlamy.org/info.html).

Week 3 Observations

This week there seemed to be less life in my Microaquarium than last weeks which is odd because I expected life to prosper, not decline. I could not find the previously mentioned Cyclops, which made me sad because I spent many an hour trying to follow its erratic path. The most interesting thing I saw today was located in the thin layer of dirt at the bottom of the aquarium. It was a type of flatworm I identified in Pennak’s Freshwater Invertebrate of the U.S., but of course I cannot find where I wrote it down. I will add it later. Anyway, these worms were so long I could see their bodies through nearly every inch (or centimeter) of dirt. They were everywhere; I began to think that it was just one long one until I came across the heads of a couple. They had tiny cilia around the top of their heads. There were still a number of paramecium grazing on my algae field. Also, a long strand of algae had grown across the top of the aquarium. It seemed to be made out of x shapes put together. Another interesting thing I noted was the water line of the aquarium. At the very top there were hundreds of extremely tiny organisms floating around. I took some pictures of the aquarium also.