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