End of the Road.

Sad day. The very last time I observed my tank! I asked Dr. McFarland what would happen to our little tanks and he reassured me they would be returned to the Earth...in other words, dumped outside. Well hopefully it is somewhere they can make it back to the water! :) My last observation was interesting, I could barely find anything! I searched for a good thirty minutes before I found anything to take a picture of, so I only got a couple! Hope you like them! :)

I have told ya'll a bunch about my cyclops and here is another lovely picture of him :) Actually I think this is an offspring of the first one. I found a skeleton of one at the bottom of my tank, poor little fellow. But this guy looked healthy and happy!!

Ohhh so at first I thought woah, what are those things!! You know the spiky things on its side?? Well a little help from Dr. McFarland, and boom I have a juvenile Cyclops!!

Shrimp anyone? Well too bad because this is a flea! At the top of the water I found a baby water flea, something I had not found in my tank before today. They had to have come from somewhere, but they are very elusive! I think I have a picture in one of the first blogs....but I am not sure! Well I am very lucky with this picture, you can see all the little hairs on him. That is the way he moves and if you look super close you can see a little "foot" inside him near the top of him.

A Philodina. Yep that is what I said! Zooming all the way out, at the very top of my tank I saw this.  He looked like an inch worm in his movements. He would scrunch up and  move and scrunch up and move again. It was so confusing to me to try to figure out what it was doing, and just like nothing, in swoops Dr. McFarland! He told me exactly how it moved and what it was doing. I soon lost track of the little guy and went off to search for my stentors!

While looking for my stentors.....well I found my little Philodina again just sitting at the bottom of my tank right beside a bunch of my stentors! See the shadow on the right side behind him? Well my stantor did not want me to get a picture of this little fellow. You know how big my stentor is, so based on the shadow, you know just how small this little fellow was!! This time he was feeding, I guess all that swimming worked up an appetite! He has cilla at the top of his head, just like the stentors and vorticella. He moves the current, talk about getting your food handed to you!

 

 

HA!! I caught a picture of a seed shrimp! I love all my creatures, especially the ones who move so fast that you can barely get a picture! He stopped for a second and I snapped one! :) I guess I am just sneaky!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This has been the most fun project I have done in a while. I loved seeing all the little organisms that swim around in the water! Some people may think water is just water. Splish, splash in the mud puddles. Those mud puddles are little ecosystems, just like the world that we can see all around us. I loved my tank and wish I could do this in every class I have! At first I thought oh no a term project, but now I am saying why does it have to end? 


"When you need me but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me but no longer need me, then I have to go. It's rather sad, really, but there it is." ~Nanny McPhee (IMDB)



Bibliography 
IMDB updated 2012. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0396752/quotes accessed on 11/19/2012 

Tres? Sure!

So this week I went to Maryland...wait this is my Botany blog! Oops :) I went in Wednesday before and after lab to observe my little guys and I found so much! My poor midge died :( I found him at the top of my tank, You can look on the bright side though, the rest of my organisms have enough food for these next couple weeks. All my little guys have gotten so big! I was searching through my tank and I saw two stentors swimming by and I chased them down and followed them until I found a whole family of them! At the bottom right corner of my tank I counted eighteen or so stentors. Dr. McFarland said that these were all probably daughters and sons of the single stentor I saw on the first observation! I was in the lab from one until three and after lab was over and I got a couple pictures for this week :) Enjoy!

This is an Oscillatoria. Just the genus name, but it is a cynobacteria. These little guys were everywhere that I looked! Small ones, medium sized ones, but this guy was the biggest one! I picked this picture because I loved the way he has twisted himself in a knot in this  picture. Good timing I guess :)

So I found out something new this week about my Stentors! You see the small white dots near the top? Well they extend down the neck and halfway down toward the base. I asked Dr. McFarland what these were and at first he didn't know either. Well we searched through a couple books and finally found the answer! Those are macronuclei. I am not sure if they are completely separate, or if they are connected. I hope to find this out soon :) If you watch the video at the bottom you can see them very clearly!

So these little guys are Rotifers. That isn't their species name, or their genus name, it is their family name. These little guys are very diverse and I have a million of them! I love this picture because you can see their profile picture (hehe) and the view from the top down. (I left my notes back in Tennessee so when I get back I will fix this caption)

Ohhhhh :) This guy is so cool! If you go back a couple blogs you will see a picture with the same name. Yep this is the same one! I said in that caption that they would break apart, and sure enough here is one of them all grown up! He is a flat worm :) I counted at least four different ones while I was scanning my tank. They loved to find each other and just hang out like siblings do. Oh and they all loved finding my stentors and bumping them and scaring them half to death!

 

Yay another video! :) Ok so the point of this video is so you can see the membranelles on my stentor. A membranelle is a little hair like part that wiggles back and forth to move the water and bring food to it. In this video they look like they are spinning around the top of him, but they are stationary I promise! If you have any vorticellas in your tank, you may be able to see the cilla around their head; this is the same thing except larger! It is a short video just ten seconds and you don't even hear my voice this time! :) Until next week!

Week numero dos!

I like my titles starting off in Spanish :) It gives me a little something extra! This week has been so hectic! I started off by going in to get my pictures on Monday and observing my tank for this week. I looked all over my tank with not much changing. My midge had grown and made a tunnel up the whole side of my tank. I looked around my tank the first day and caught some great pictures!  Here take a look :)

By now you all know my stentor really well. He is quite photogenic and very expressive. This is what he looks like when he is scared. He shrinks down and when he is sure the danger is gone, he extends back.

This is my little guy extending back up after he was scared

Another view? Sure! He is attached to the mud. In this picture you can see his organelles. Now keep in mind this guy is only one cell.

I have been trying to get a clear picture of this guy for a long time. This a cyclops. He is very fast and loves to bury himself in the mud. I first found him chilling with my midge over in the corner of my tank. This is the adult form of a Cyclops, if you want to see a juvenile, just look on the front of your lab manual.

 On Sunday, October 28th Dr. McFarland added "Atison's Betta Food" to our tank. It is made by Ocean Nutrition, Aqua Pet Americas, 3528 West 500 South, Salt Lake City UT 84104. The yummy ingredients include: fish meal, wheat flour, 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%. The only thing wrong with adding this to my tank is, most of my organisms are large. This is a very bad thing. Three days after adding the pellet, it is gone and most of my larger organisms, including my cyclops, are dead. Observing my tank on Wednesday after lab I noticed my midge had broken out of his tunnel and was floating near the top of the water.  I looked closer and noticed he was dying to. I asked Dr. McFarland about this and he told me that my tank had ran out of food, but that once my organisms die, something else would happen. My tank will gradually rebuild itself. Some organisms are going strong such as my stentor! Here is a video and a description enjoy!!

 

And just for everyone interested :) Here is a video of my stentor splitting in two. Otherwise known as giving birth!! Just turn your speakers to mute. I mean it caught my voice and Dr. McFarland talking. I mean if you want to hear me getting all excited and nerding out go for it! But I know you will love it if you watch it :)

Observation numero uno!

Week number one started off with a bang and a bug! The first organism I saw was a midge (pic 1). I saw many other organisms as well. It took a while but I, along with the help of Dr. McFarland, have identified all the pictures that I was able to capture! The critters may have been quick, but they stopped just long enough for a picture. Good luck trying to turn both of the knobs trying to keep up with them! It makes me feel like I am working an etch-a-sketch! Dr. McFarland helped me find cross reference each of these organisms with a book. Each book had a picture and a couple had a description of it. Here are a few pictures that I edited and my babies' names! 

First is my Midge. A midge is a larvae of a flying insect. He is getting bigger and bigger each week! In my first observation I found him in a very small cocoon type covering. He could move freely inside and, for lack of better words, flopped around every chance he got. At one point he extended the front half of his body out of his covering and grabbed debris and plugged up the hole he went out of. His Genus name is Chironomus. I do not know his species name though.

(Thorp, 1991. pg 652)

                                      

This is a water flea.  This one is very translucent but he is alive.  They are very quick and swim with the second set of antenna on their head. As they swim, if you can keep up with them, you can see them eat and excrete feces. His family name is Cladocera. 
(Pennak, 1989. pg. 374)

One of my favorite organisms I found was a Stentor. This on is swimming of course, but what fascinates me is these usually do not swim. They are usually attached to something. I have pictures in my next blog of a stentor attached to the sediment in the bottom of the tank and on the Amblestegium sp. 
(Lee, 1985 pg. 440)

Another interesting organism I found was a Stenostomum. This little fellow is actually 6 different organisms attached. They are called zooids and eventually they will split apart and go on their merry little way alone! I found him at the water line of my tank bobbing in and out of the water. He swam down into the tank, but not too far. I hope to see them broken apart in the future 
(Pennak, 1989. pg 132)

A difflugia is an amoeba. At first I thought this was something totally different, but Dr. McFarland looked at this and told me without any doubt that this little guy was a difflugia. Diffugias are small and round and you cannot see it in this picture but in others you can see where he is attached at. In this picture you can see the flagella around the outside and some of the organelles. Most of the details are obscured by the outer "shell" like covering, but small details are visible. The move slowly. I found this one near the bottom of my tank, but two others were found attached to the mud at the base of my tank. 
(Pennak, 1989)

Bibliography
Lee, John; Hunder, Seymour; Bovee, Eugene. 1985.  An Illustrated Guide to the Protoza. Lawerence (KS): Allen Press, Inc. pg. 440

Pennak, Robert W. 1989. Fresh-Water Invertebrates of the United States. Protozoa to Mollusca. 3rd Ed. New York (NY): John Wiley and Sons Inc. pgs. 132, 374

Thorp, James; Covich, Alan. 1991. Ecology and Classification of North American Freshwater Invertebrates. San Diego (CA): Academic Press. pgs. 652

Setting up my Tank!

Picture by Kenneth McFarland

First off this is a picture of where my water in my tank came from. It is a small pool that is spring fed. The story goes that this spring used to flow into a creek, but unfortunately it was dammed up and now it is a small pool. Besides the spring that feeds it, runoff from the Lynnhurst Cemetery, off of Adair Drive in Knox Co Tennessee. The spring is in partial shade and here is the exact GPS coordinates for anyone who wants to go find it N36 01.357 W83 55.731 958 ft  :) 

First I filled my MicroAquarium^TM   ⅓ of the way with sediment from the bottom of the pool and made sure it was fairly level. After that I filled it ⅓ of the way with water from the middle of the sample, and I filled it the rest of the way with water from the surface. To keep our tank from turning anaerobic we added two different types of plants.

Picture by Graeme

The first plant was Amblystegium sp. This moss grows in water and was taken from a natural spring at Carters Mill Park which is on Carter Mill Road in Knox CO. TN. It was grown in partial shade exposure and the GPA coordinates are N36 01.168 W83 42.832.  

Flowers and Carnivorous bulbs of Bladderwort (fig 1 & 2)
(Salmon and Almodovar)

The second plant we added was the Utricularia gibba L. Picture 1 is of the flowers that are above the water. The second picture is a microscopic photo of the below water carnivorous bulbs. Looking up close the inside of the bulbs looks like a Conch shell. Small organisms can move in and out of the bulb, but larger organisms cannot swim back out once they are in. This plant is originally from the south shore of Spain Lake (N 35o55 12.35" W088o20' 47.00), Camp Bella Air Rd. East of Sparta Tn. in White Co. Then the plant was grown in water tanks outside of the greenhouse at Hesler Biology Building at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.

After adding my plants my tank looked like this! The first two plants you see are Amblystegium sp. The second plant is Utricularia gibba L. The fourth plant is the Amblystegium sp. You cannot see any thing else in the tank but I observed many tiny organisms living in there. I cannot wait until my next observation to see my little tank and all my babies!! :)

 

Bibliography 

Botany 111 Fall 2012 (Blog). Watersource: 10. Lynnhurst Cemetery off of Adair Drive. Knox Co (cited 2012 October 24).  Available from: http://botany1112012.blogspot.com

Bruce Salmon, author of "Carnivorous Plants of New Zealand" (Ecosphere publications, 2001) Picture available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utricularia_gibba

Picture 2 of Utricularia gibba by Jose R. Almodovar 2011

Amblystegium sp picture by blogger Graeme available at http://www.ispot.org.uk/node/107228