Monday, November 11, 2013

In looking at my aquarium, there were many changes from the first time I looked. There were more organisms moving around in almost all areas of the micro aquarium.

I saw perimysiums the most out of everything in the whole aquarium. They were all moving around like slugs at a very moderate pace compared to other organisms that were around. Below is a picture of a perimysium I saw moving aroud in the middle of the aquarium where there was not much plant material or dirt.
The next most abundant organism that I found was a rotifer. They were somewhat faster than the perimysium and had more a shell type body. While viewing them I saw one standing on its two toe like flagella which was unexpected because I did not think it could balance like it was. The picture below shows the shell like body and the flagella toes that it was standing on. The toes split which cannot be seen from this image.
Another organism I observed was a stentor. The stentor was a very interesting organism to observe because it would retract back and be almost invisible. Then I could slowly see it start to make its way back out and it had little hair-like structures which would rotate around the rim of the stentor. In the image you can somewhat see the hair-like structures that are rotating around it. 
Another very interesting organism in which I found in the dirt of the bottom which was not moving was an actinophrys. It is a round structure with many flagella of different sizes surrounding it. The very interesting part of the image is that it has consumed a diatom and has a bulge in it where the diatom was too big to fit in the actinophrys. You can also see the flagella surrounding it.
The last organism that I found was a gastrotrich. It was mainly moving around near what seemed to me as a cluster of food. It, like the rotifer, has a forked tail, but I never saw it use them to stand up on and it hardly moved them. It is the biggest organism that I saw in the micro aquarium and probably the fastest also. 

No comments:

Post a Comment