Third Week's Observation - Nov. 4

There was quite a drastic change to my micro aquarium this week. Like last week, there were noticeably more living organisms in my aquarium, but unlike last week, there were a bunch of dead ones too. Before, I would occasionally see a couple dead critters floating around, but this week, my aquarium was a tiny graveyard. Most of the dead organisms were rohefurs and other unicellular organisms. I also noticed that many of the limnias were dead or gone. The week of Oct. 28, I saw an abundance of limias around my aquarium, but there were only I few left this week. Even though many of the organisms died, there still seemed to be an increase in population in my aquarium, mostly small swimming cells. These tend to hangout around the plants, I assume for food. Also, my aquarium had lost almost half of its water! I believe it was from evaporation. 

Organisms

- There were a couple annelids digging around the plants and dirt near the bottom. Both of them were very large, much larger than the one I observed the previous week. They were both very active.

- I saw a couple vorticella (Figure 233). Like the stentors I covered last week, they were tethered to plants and would react to movement from the environment (it would retract towards the plant).

Figure 233 p. 113 (D.J. Patterson 2003)

- I found several stentors. The seemed to have avoided the mass death because I did not find many that were dead.

- Blue-green algae was everywhere. Before this week, there wasn't any in my aquarium, by now it seems to have taken over. Even without the microscope, I could see the algae populating my aquarium. I'm not sure if this had anything to do with all the dead organisms.