Observations on 10/28

I would like to open today with stating that a Beta Fish food pellet was added to the aquarium on Friday, the 22nd. Due to this the aquarium was teeming with life today, mostly organisms that I observed in my last post. These included Copepod, Didinium and Daphnia, the Daphnia were much larger and I even watched one eat and then defecate. I did see some organisms that I hadn't seen before, these were Chilomonas and Euglena. Towards the end of my observation session, Doctor McFarland came over and helped me identify more organisms. These organisms were Lecane Rotifera and Aspidisca.

Observations for 10/20

When I first began observing my micro-aquarium today I didn't see much of anything, but as I kept moving around and observing different parts of the aquarium I did begin to see quite a bit. The first organism that I saw was one that I used the charts in the lab to identify as a Didinium, they are vaguely oval shaped creatures with an appendage off their back that looks like a spike. The next creature I saw I thought looked like a kind of crab or some other crustacean and sure enough, when I went to the charts to try and identify it the picture of the Copepod stuck out immediately as what I had seen. Shortly after that I saw another crustacean that I wasn't sure what it was, with the help of the charts I believe it to be an Ostracod. As I continued to observe my aquarium I saw a creature which I thought looked like some kind of spider, but with the help of the charts I now think it was a Crawling Water Beetle. Throughout my observations the creature I saw the most of was the Didinium, followed by the Copepod I saw a few of the Ostracod and only one of what I think was the Crawling Water Beetle.

A few notes on my last post, I believe the slug like creature that I saw was a Spirostomum and the whip-like creature was a Nematode.

Setting up the Microaquarium

Last Tuesday in lab we set up our micro aquariums, we put stickers on them that were color coded to our lab section, our table and seat during lab. My stickers were Red, Orange and then Green which corresponded to Section 2, Table 6 and Seat 4.
After this we got water to put in our aquariums, I got my water from the Meads Quarry, Island Home Ave, Knox Co. Tennessee Partial shade exposure Rock Quarry N35 57.162 W83 51.960 880.
After this we took two plants and put them in the aquariums, then we observed them. I didn't see much activity in mine, there was a long whip like creature and a strange slug looking creature but besides that I didn't see anything else.