Sunday, October 26, 2014

First Week's Observation - Oct. 23

At first glance this week, there did not seem to be much change to my micro aquarium. The number of unicellular organisms seems to have increased since I set up the aquarium, but other than that, nothing substantial. This week, with the help of Dr. McFarland and the book Fresh Water Invertebrates of the United States by Robert W. Pennak, I was able to identify most of critters I could find.

-This first organism I found was an annelid. It was relatively large, worm shaped critter. It's movements were inconsistent and sporadic. Sometimes, it would sit relatively still for a while and at other times it would thrash around (I'm assuming that's how it eats). It stayed at the bottom of the tank near the dirt and plants.

-I also found several Limnais (Figure J). These organisms were the most interesting in my opinion. They attach a tube to various surfaces (This one attached itself to one of the plants) and hang out the end of it. As you can see in Figure J, they have these tendrils that move in a chainsaw looking motion. If they feel a disturbance, like me tapping on the glass, they withdraw into their tubes. These organisms were found at the bottom of the aquarium, either on the plants or the dirt.

Figure J p.218 (Robert W. Pennak 1989)

-There was also a small oval shaped organism with a tail called a uclaneus rohefur. There were several of these around the micro aquarium and they didn't seem to be located in any specific location. Their movement was relatively slow, but constant.

-The most numerous of the critters in the aquarium were small single-celled organisms, or "swimming cells". These were too small to identify and were typically circular or oval shaped. These organisms were very energetic and were constantly moving in various patterns.

While these were the organisms that I saw, I'm certain there a ton more to be found and identified in my micro aquarium. Hopefully we'll see these in the coming weeks.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Day 1 of the MicroAquarium

We finally setup our micro aquariums this week. I've been curious about this project since it was first mentioned at the beginning of this semester. While observations and pictures will follow in the next couple of weeks, I just setup the aquarium and had a quick look at all the critters I could find this week.

The Setup

We first had to build the micro aquariums using a glass tank, and stand holder, and a lid. Each student had to label their aquarium with colored stickers and initials in order to distinguish it from the others. From there, each student had to choose between 12 different water sources from the Knoxville area. I chose source 3, Carter Mill Park at spring source (McFarland, 2014). This water was obtained by Dr. McFarland on October 12, 2014. The steps I took to set up my aquarium are as follows:
  1. I extracted a small layer of dirt from the bottom of source sample 3 so that it barely covered the bottom of my aquarium.
  2. I them took some water from the middle of the sample as well as the surface so that I could get a variety of organisms in my aquarium.
  3. I then put pieces of two different plants that were provided so that they could oxygenate the water (McFarland, 2014). The two plants I used are:
    • Amblestegium varium (Hedwig) Lindberg. Moss.
      Collection from: Natural spring. at Carters Mill Park, Carter Mill Road, Knox Co. TN. Partial shade exposure. N36 01.168 W83 42.832. 10/12/2014
    • Utricularia gibba L. Flowering plant. A
      carnivorous plant. Original material from south shore of Spain Lake (N 35o55 12.35" W088o20' 47.00), Camp Bella Air Rd. East of Sparta Tn. in White Co. and grown in water tanks outside of greenhouse at Hesler
      Biology Building. The University of Tennessee. Knox Co. Knoxville TN.
      10/12/2014

Observations

Once I had my micro aquarium setup and ready to go, I took a look at it through a microscope to see what I had captured. I didn't see that much at first, but when I looked at my aquarium through 100x magnification, I saw a lot of tiny organisms squirming about. Dr. McFarland confirmed my suspicions that that was there way of eating (which is really all they do). I also saw a fairly large worm like organism that spent all its time thrashing about sporadically, also eating. I suspect I will be seeing many different organisms in the weeks to come as they continue grow.

Bibliography

D.J. Patterson. 2003. Free-Living Freshwater Protozoa. 1st ed. London. Manson Publishing Ltd.

James H. Tharp. 2010. Ecology and Classification of Northern American Freshwater Invertebrates. 3rd ed. Canada. Elsevier Inc.

McFarland, Kenneth [Internet] Botany 111 Fall 2014. [Oct. 19, 2014]. Available from http://botany1112014.blogspot.com/

Robert W. Pennak. 1989. Fresh-Water Invertebrates of the United States. 3rd ed. Canada. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.