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.