Botany Lab Week 4

Well, this is the 4th week of blogs and everything is going CRAZY! The entire food pellet is gone without a trace. Most of the organisms are down towards the bottom of the aquarium, but a few are hanging out around the moss. Also, the cyanobacteria, has changed shape again with most of them in a vertical line.

First, I will start with the things that are falling in population. The thing that had the most drastic drop in population was the Chlamydamonas. I guess that they are a good food source for the things that grew in population. Another thing that had a large decrease in population, probably for the same reason, was the Paramecium. Other organisms of note were Rotifers and Halteria.

Most of the other creatures in the micro-aquarium grew in population, except for the Gastrotrichs which stayed stable. The organisms that grew, but not as impressively as some, were the Amphipods, Diatoms, and Cyanobacteria. But there were 3 organisms that had a large increase. They were the Daphnia, Cyclops, and Seed Shrimp. There were many more Daphnia than I had ever seen in place. The Cyclops also had a large jump in population and it was impossible to even make a guess as to how many there were. The Seed Shrimp also grew very impressively in numbers. I thought that they would have died of with only 1 or 2 in the aquarium, but I was wrong. In my final count there were 8, but there is a large possibility that there were more.

Seed Shrimp

Picture found at

http://www.sacsplash.org/critters/ostracod.htm

Botany Lab Week 3

This week, one pellet of fish food was added to the aquarium. On Thursday October 25, 2007 one pellet of "Atison's Betta Food" was added to each Micro Aquaria. It 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%.


This fish food made a very large change in the amount of organisms observed. There was a lot of movement around the food that consisted mostly of rotifers, paramecium, diatoms, and what look like halteria. There were about 50 rotifers, 100’s of paramecium, thousands of diatoms and hundreds of halteria. Some other things that I saw in the area of the fish food were chlamydomonas and daphnia. There were countless chlamydomonas, but I only saw about 5 daphnia. One very interesting thing that I noticed was that the amphipods tended to stay away from the fish food and stayed in the muck at the bottom of the aquarium. Some other usuals were the copepods and the seed shrimp, but this time, I could tell without a doubt that this was a different one because it was smaller than the other had been. I do not know what became of the other seed shrimp.


There was one knew thing that I saw in the aquarium. At first I thought it was a rotifer cruising along, but after a closer look I could tell that it had a different, more fluid movement pattern. It seemed to glide along, and was hard to keep up with and get a sketch of, but after a few minutes of persistence, I was able to get a sketch and identify it. It is an organism in the phyla Gastrotricha. And after I had examined more of the aquarium, I saw about 20 more of them. It seemed like they fed by moving and their mouths had cilia that moved the food into their body.


One thing that I found interesting was that all of the cyanobacteria’s ends had pointed towards the light that was above them. I also a more types of cyanobacteria. There were at least 2 other types that I saw that I had not the previous week. I also noticed that the moss that I had placed into the aquarium had some new growth.

Halteria

Chlamydomonas

Gastrotrich

Pictures found at:

http://cabfst28.cnea.gov.ar/~zanette/micro/halteria/3512.jpg

http://www.btinternet.com/~stephen.durr/chlamydomonas.jpg

http://www.gpmatthews.nildram.co.uk/animalcules/gastrotricha/gastrotrich03.jpg

Botany Lab Week 2

This week I was able to spend more time looking at the aquarium, because I already knew most of what was inside of it. I did see some knew things though. I had not noticed the first week, but there were diatoms on the moss that I had but in it, and now they are EVERYWHERE. There had to be over 1 or 2 thousand of them. I also saw a large amount of cyanobacteria,



but was unable to tell if it was all one type or if there were more than one species.


I also many of the same creatures from last time. I saw a large increase of rotifers. Now there are about 40 of them. There was also a huge jump in the number of “shrimp things.” Now I know that they are called amphipods, and there are about 30 of them. There was a small rise in the daphnia population which is now at 10. I also saw 5 or 6 copepods (Cyclops), which is more than the 2 I saw the other week. Another thing that intrigued me was the seed shrimp. I saw one, but there was another “shell” in the water. I would like to know if it was alive, dead, or if the one in there shed it.

Other things that I found interesting was that I did not see a single paramecium, but I did not look very hard for one, there were green flipping things that I was not able to identify, and this:
if you look carefully to the right of the organism, you can see the outline of 2 flagella.

Botany Lab Week 1

Well this is the first entry for the project in Botany Lab, so here it goes. We put our MicroAquariums together in lab on Tuesday, and there were plenty of things to choose from to go in them. But, I wanted to put something unique into my aquarium. Our lab instructor, Patrick Hudson, asked if anyone wanted to go to the greenhouse to get anything from there to put in their aquarium. I immediately, along with 3 or 4 other people, said yes. We went to the greenhouse, and I put in: some “muck” from a tray holding Venus Fly Traps, some liquid from a pitcher plant, and some water in a bromeliad, and some moss that was found outside.

I was a little disappointed when I first looked at my aquarium, because I was unable to find anything for about 10 minutes. But, my patience paid off when I found a couple little shrimp looking things squirming through the muck at the bottom of the aquarium. In total I saw about 10 of them. Another organism that I saw a lot of was rotifers. They did not really move much, except for their mouth that was constantly moving food into their bellies. I saw about 8 rotifers.

I also saw many parameciums. They were constantly moving, and hard to keep up with. They would normally move in one direction and not change directions quickly. I also say a single nematode that just sort of wiggled, but did not get anywhere. There were also 4 organisms that I was unable to identify. One had a red dot in the middle of its body and moved quite a bit, there were about 5 of them. Another was moving around on the moss and had this green-looking shell. I kind of resembled a hermit crab. I only saw one or two of them. I also saw these really small circular looking things that moved really fast and were constantly flipping. There were too many of them to count. And last I saw 2 water flea/spider mite looking things. They were crawling around in the muck, and when I asked the instructor what it was, he said that he would have to ask somebody. I did not pay much attention to if there were algae or chlorophyll containing things, but the next time that we look at the aquariums I will.

I found the picture of the rotifer at http://www.microscopyu.com/galleries/dxm1200/collothecasmall.html because I forgot to take a picture.