Week 5

The following observation of the microaquarium was made on 11/14/13.

Once again the microaquarium appears to be full of life.

The diatoms are still high in numbers. The Tachysomas seem to have reduced in number.

The organism in the above picture is a cyanobacteria identified as Oscillatoria sp.(Prescott 1964) If you look closely you can see the individual cells. The cyanobacteria move as a unit and very slowly. I asked Dr. McFarland how they actually moved and he seemed unsure.

The organism pictured above was identified as Anacystis cyanea (Forest 1954) This organism was of particular interest and I had a good time trying to identify it with some assistance from Dr. McFarland. It has a blue-green color and a rounded cluster. It remained stationary.

Another organism was identified as Centropyxis sp. (Patterson 2003) It was an amoeba with a shell that it made around itself. the shell had an opening and you could see the amoeba moving around inside. There were multiples of this organism located around the microaquarium. They are stationary.

This was the last observation for the microaquarium lab.

Bibliography

 Patterson, D.J. Free-Living Freshwater Protozoa: A Colour Guide. Washington, D.C. Mason Publishing. 2003. Pg 95

Forest, H.S. Handbook of Algae. The University of Tennessee Press. 1954. Pg 366.

Prescott, G.W. How to Know The Fresh-Water Algae. WM. C. Brown Company Publishers. 1964. Pg 187.

Week 4

This observation was made on November 7th, 2013.

The microaquarium is still full of live. Diatoms have began to become one of the dominant organisms.

The organism in the picture above was identified as Pinnularia sp.(Patrick and Reimer 1966) It is a diatom. There were many others like this all around the micro aquarium. The diatoms can have a very beautiful appearance. They don't move quickly at all.

The organism above was identified as Tachysoma sp. (Patterson 2003) There were many other Tachysomas traveling around. They don't move very fast and kind of jerk around looking for food to suck up.

The microaquariums is populated by organisms too small to identify as well. More identifications and observations are to come.

Bibliograpy

Patterson, D.J. Free-Living Freshwater Protozoa: A Colour Guide. Washington, D.C. Mason Publishing. 2003. Pg 125

 Patrick, R. and Reimer, C.W. Diatoms of the United States. The academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Philadelphia, PA. Pg 650.

Week 3

This blog post is delayed for a couple of reasons. The observations made here were made on Thursday October 31, 2013. My lab notebook was left in the lab and I would not have been able to make proper citations for my identifications without it. Also, when going to work on this blog, my laptop charger exploded in my face so I have had to find an alternative computer to post from.

On Friday October 25, 2013, Dr. McFarland added a Beta Food Pellet. This is the information provided by his blog about the food pellet. ""Atison's Betta Food" made by Ocean Nutrition, Aqua Pet Americas, 3528 West 500 South, Salt Lake City, UT 84104. Ingredients: Fish meal, wheat flower, 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%." (McFarland, 2013)

For this observation it was the first time I got pictures from the microscope of the life inside my aquarium.




This image above is of a rotifer, Euclanis sp.(Thorp and Covich 2009) This little invertebrate floated around looking for food, stopping to suck it up as it found it. I noticed a few other organisms that looked similar to this swimming around.




The image above is of Paruroleptus sp. (Patterson, 2003) This organism appeared asymmetrical and had cilia that looked like they were spinning as it moved around. It didn't move very quickly. Dr. McFarland seemed interested that this was a new organism, I suppose others haven't found one of these which makes it especially interesting. It was the only of its kind that I saw.

Bibliograpy


McFarland, Kenneth [Internet] Botany 111 Fall 2013. [cited 11/6/13]. Available from http://botany1112013.blogspot.com/



Patterson, D.J. Free-Living Freshwater Protozoa: A Colour Guide. Washington, D.C. Mason Publishing. 2003.


Thorp, James and Covich, Alan. Ecology and Classification of North American Freshwater Invertebrates. 3rd ed. London, UK. Elsevier. 2009.

Week Two: No Signs of Life

I went to observe my microaquarium on Thursday 24, 2013 around 3 p.m. only to find that, other than the two photo synthetic organisms that I added, there were no signs of life. I spent some time looking until I told Dr. McFarland who then took me to the greenhouse to collect water from some different sources.

In the greenhouse, we poured out my old water and Dr. McFarland started collecting from different sources. Some water was taken from the holding tanks. Some was taken from a carnivorous plant Nepenthes truncata. Dr. McFarland also added a cyanobacteria to increase the diversity.

I took my aquarium back to the lab and started observing under the microscope again. There seemed to be signs of life this time and hopefully everything will be alive and bustling next time when I return to observe and begin identification.

Bibliography for Post One

Bibliography


McFarland, Kenneth [Internet] Botany 111 Fall 2013. [cited 10/23/13]. Available from http://botany1112013.blogspot.com/

Week One: Microaquarium Setup

My Botany 111 class for Fall of 2013 will be making and observing microaquariums for five weeks. My microaquarium was made on October 15, 2013 and will be observed four times after its creation.

To start the set up for the microaquarium it was first necessary to "label" our own so that we would be able to tell them apart from the many other students in our class. We added three colored dots representing our lab section, table number, and seat number, respectively. I also wrote my initials on the three dots incase by some chance another student had the same color combination on their microaquarium.

The microaquarium itself is made of a thin plastic material, is held up by a detachable base, and is closed with a detachable lid.

After the labeling we were to fill our microaquarium with water from a source around Knoxville. My water source was semi-randomly chosen in that it just happened to be the water source on the table where I was sitting, but also I decided to stick with it because I have personally been to this location which makes this whole process just a bit more interesting. The source, as given by Dr. McFarland on the main class blog at http://www.botany1112013.blogspot.com/ , is "10. Water pool below spring. Lynnhurst Cemetery off of Adair Drive. Knox Co. Knoxville TN. Partial shade exposure Spring Feed Pond N36 01.357 W83 55.731 958 ft 10/9/2011" (McFarland, 2013)

 
Image of the water source. (McFarland, 2013) 

A layer of sediment from the source was added to the aquarium before the water was actually added.

The image above is what the aquarium looked like after the water was added.

We then added two photosyntetic organisms to add oxygen to the system.

The first added was Fontinalis sp. which is a moss. The image below contains the information we were given about this organism.

The other one I added was Utricularia gibba which is a flowering plant. The image below contains the information we were given about this organism.

After the addition of these two organisms we were given our first opportunity to look at our microaquarium under a light microscope. In my microaquarium I was able to find a few organisms moving around and presumably adjusting to their new environment. We were told it was not necessary to identify these organisms at this time. Some that I noted were nematode-like, including one that after finding in the microscope I realized I could see with my naked eye. Another interesting organism I saw looked something like a cone and had what looked to me like teeth that were spinning around rapidly. It will be interesting to watch this system become more diverse and also to identify what these things are.

I, unfortunately, did not capture an image of the microaquarium after the addition of the two photosynthetic organisms.



I'd like to close this first blog post with a tangential observation. While we were observing our microaquariums under the microscopes for the first time it was beautiful to observe the reactions myself and my classmates were having. Every now and then there would be an exclamation of "Wow!" or "Look at this!" Seeing this excitement coming from simple observation of life really made me happy. It seems like a child-like amazement with the natural world is still to be found in myself and my peers and that really makes me smile.