Semaine Une

During the first week of the observation i found a couple of new microrganisms in my Mike the Microaquarium. One of the larger of the new found organisms was a cyclops, it looks like a plated jellyfish with four antennae and two tails. When i first found it it was attacking a much smaller microrganism, and eventually ended up consuming it. Another organism that has still not been identified is a smaller spider looking thing with four hairy legs. It seemed as if it was crawling around on the side of the microquarium. Another new one i found, that also has not been identified was a oval shaped organism with lots of small fins/legs surrounding its entire body and what looked to be one eye at the top of its head. This organism was seen juming around extreamly fast throughout the microaquarium. And a final very small organsim, maybe 2 cells wide, was very simple. It contained only a body and a tail with no other distinct figures on it. Lots of single celled organisms could still be seen swiming around in the aquarium, including a colony of rod shaped single celled organisms near the moss at the top of the microaquarium. The organisms that i had found earlier were still present. The shimp thing was also identified as a Seed Shrimp. The globule organisms were still present as well, and existed in a larger number with both large and small ones. Other than that everything still remained the same. One thing i did notice, however, was that there was a lot of small plastic bag, clear things piled on top of the debris at the bottom, i couldn't quite make out what they were, but they were deffinatly not alive. I may have been decomposing corpses of some dead microorganisms. I will find out next week what they might be. See you next week!

Setting up the Microaquarium

Code = Light Blue, Yellow, Dark Blue. W.S.M.
Contents = Water 4, Moss B, Pinguicula

We first obtained a microaquarium from Dr. McFarland which was to be used to place a few drops of pond water from one of the sixteen different choices of water available. I chose to get water four which contained water from a water pool below a spring in Fountain City Park west of Broadway at Hotel Ave in Knox Co, Knoxville TN, taken on 10/14/2007. I took a even spread of water from the bottom, middle, and top, of the sample, making sure to get some of the debris from the bottom. The class was then instructed to take one of the three samples of moss to add to the microaquarium. I took moss b which was Rhynchostegium serrulatum from the biology annex on white ave. at the University of Tennessee. After the moss was added we were given a sort of microorganism eating plant, called Utricularia vulgaris L. or Pinguicula which i added to the microaquarium. After the microaquarium was finished and assembled i placed it under the microscope to make my initial observations. I could see a couple of different microorganisms, my favorite being a small shrimp looking thing which seemed to be eating the debris in the bottom and digesting it extremely quickly. This microorganism could possibly be a Seed Shrimp although i have not confirmed yet whether this is true or not. Other microorganisms included a glob looking thing that dug into the debris as soon as i started looking at it, i actually observed a few of these in the microaquarium. Other than that the microaquarium seemed to contain a variety of different single celled organisms swimming throughout.