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.