Week 3 of the MicroAquarium

On Friday, October 22, 2010, Dr. McFarland added one Beta Food Pellet to our micro-aquariums. 
Information on this beta food pellet is listed below. 
"Atison's Betta Food" 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%.


Today I saw a large blueish colored ball on Plant B. Dr. McFarland and I discovered that it was a bladder. I did not know plants had bladders, but they do. I saw many more bladders on Plant B but I noticed that the others were green, not blue. I saw the nematode again. This time I saw a few nematodes. Dr. McFarland also noticed a seed shrimp in my micr-aquarium. This was new to me, I had not seen it before. I also saw a snail. It was on Plant A. This was the first week I had noticed it. It was pretty large. I still concluded that there was more action on Plant B, but Plant A had more than usual, because the Beta Food Pellet was on that side. There was also more air bubbles throughout the micro-aquarium.
        Bad news, Dr. McFarland and I believe the annelid passed away. We saw no remnants but could not find the annelid and it was rather large last week. This could be due to the fact that I accidentally spilt some water out of the micro-aquarium onto the lab floor, the annelid could have fell out. :( I added more water. I have spilt the water twice now, so there may be a few more critters that will not be in there next week. 

Week 2 of the MicroAquarium

Today I saw an Annelid in my aquarium. I did not see it last week. An annelid is a legless and segmented organism. It moved slower than the nematode, but could move fast at times. It was also filled with red dots. I again saw some smaller single-celled organisms that were transparent. I saw some multi-cellular organisms, too. I noticed one green colored organism. I was not sure what kind it was. I also gathered from watching my aquarium today that the organisms seemed to be more around Plant B than Plant A. I also noticed a rotifer in the water.

To see a diagram of an annelid go to Fig. 13.7
           Smith, Douglas. 2001.Pennak's Freshwater Invertebrate of the United States. Wiley. 4th Edition. 638.


      This is the tail-end of the Annelid.

Setting up the micro aquarium

Set-up Procedure: We obtained a glass tank, stand holder, and lid. We then placed three different colored dots on the glass tank to distinguish our tank from our classmates' tanks. The top colored dot represented our lab section. The middle colored dot represented the table we were at during lab and the last color represented the seat number at our table. We also put our initials on the dots too distinguish our own tanks even more. We then used a pipet and extracted water from one of the provided containers.We extracted water first from the bottom layer of the container and filled our tank 1/3 full, then we gathered some of the water from the middle layer of the container, filled our tank 1/3 full, and then the top layer again filling our tank 1/3 full. We then put our tank on its stand and placed Plant A and Plant B in our tanks.


Water type: 8. Tennessee River at boat ramp across from Knoxville sewer plant. Neyland Dr. Knox Co. Knoxville TN. Full sun exposure. French Broad and Holston Rivers water Sheds N35 56.722 W83 55.587 813 ft 10/10/2010 (McFarland 2010).


I observed by looking through a microscope at my aquarium both stationary and moving organisms. There was a nematode in my aquarium and it squired first fast. I also had some single-celled organisms and they moved more slower almost stationary. I had multicellular organisms that moved in swimming like positions. My aquarium involved both chlorophyll green and non-green organisms, but I had more non-green organisms. It looked like the organisms preferred the middle habitat of the aquarium. I only saw one nematode. I saw many single-celled organisms and quite a few multi-celled organisms as well.

Citation

                McFarland,K. 2010. Botany 111 2010: An inquiry into the dynamic microorganisms in our environment. "Blogger.com" through Google (Internet). Cited 2010 October 13. 4:09. Available from: <http://botany1112010.blogspot.com/2010/10/inquiry-into-dynamic-microorganisms-in.html>