Fourth Week's Observation - Nov. 13

My aquarium has continued to grow greener. This week, there was much more blue-green algae and the filament clusters were much bigger than last week. The plants have also grown significantly since I created my aquarium. Now, instead of occupying only a portion of the space in my aquarium, they have grown to fill almost the entire area. Just like last week, the amount of organisms has increased to an all time high. There are many more small, multicellular and unicellular organisms that inhabit my aquarium. They are the most densely populated near the plants, and since the plants have spread to every centimeter of my aquarium, These tiny critters can be seen everywhere. There are still more dead organisms, mostly small swimming cells, but with the increase of plant and algae life, these are harder to see making it look less like a tiny microscopic graveyard.

 Organisms

- I saw more limnias this week after most of them seemed to have died last week. They were still mostly connected to the dirt and plants near the bottom of the aquarium.

- There were several annelids digging in the dirt at the bottom of my aquarium. There two really big ones that I suspect are the ones I have been seeing getting bigger since the inception of my aquarium.

- I saw a new organism called a chaetonotus (Figure E). It can't be seen at this magnification, but it has cilia on its front to help it move around. It was relatively slow moving and didn't make sharp movements.

Figure E p. 171 (James H. Tharp 2010)

- I also saw a nematode. It was similar to annelids in shape and movement with a few differences. It was much skinnier than an annelid and its head and anus were indistinguishable.

- Something interesting I saw this week was a free swimming stentor. It had detached itself from whatever it was growing on and was swimming around freely. I hadn't seen this in any of my other observations. I only ever saw them attached to plants and the dirt.

- There were also a couple clusters of green algae. The clusters consisted of about ten circular algae cells that had distinct green centers. There was a barely visible film around the algae cells and none of the cells breached each other.