Week Five Observations 11-9-10

Before putting the aquarium under the microscope, I observed several things.  The water this week has a cloudy appearance with a clear green tint slim.  There are also large air bubbles on plant B. I can also still see the seed shrimp swimming around like crazy in the bottom of the aquarium. There are now two seed shrimp.

This is a picture looking down on the Seed Shrimp.


There appears to be more life in the aquarium, but there is also sightly more death than I saw last week.  I saw a Paramecium Bursania and the really cool thing about this was it was in the middle of dividing.  It was really interesting to get to see that.



This is what a Paramecium Bursania looks like while going through the stages of division.


Bacteria was spotted like above, all over the aquarium.  Dr. McFarland was unsure of what type of bacteria this was and wanted to keep a picture for himself to take and show the bacteria specialist on campus, and thought maybe even she wouldn't for sure know what type it was.


The picture above shows two Paramesia.  These can be seen all over the aquarium.  They move around and are identified by their spiral movement.

Week Four Observations

The aquarium is becoming more and more populated with Paramesia, Nematods, Rotafers, Cilins, and other forms of life.  There are also some that have lost life. 
Some life in the aquarium had caught my eye before the aquarium was even put under the microscope.  These were identified by Dr. McFarland as seed shrimp. They sure do have a lot of energy, because it was hard to keep them in view for more than a few seconds to get a good look at them
An observation that was noticed this week was the life has seemed to have spread out more and is not only on plant B, but also between the plants.  
Alga were spotted, but they were unhealthy and didn't appear to have much life left. These looked like a chain made up of small cylinders. 
Small clusters of bacteria have become more frequent all over the aquarium.