observation 4

               I began observation four at 5:00 pm on Thursday. I first started to view around the plaint life by the upper part of the micro aquarium. The first major difference I noticed in the water was the large amount of dead unidentifiable algae. I believe this is caused by the food pellet that was added just before my last observation. Perhaps this pellet caused a miniature "bloom" in algae. Once the carbon source started to run out there was a large die off. The dead algae I see may be a result of this. Along with the algae I saw the first Aeolosoma (Rainis and Russell, 76) in the micro aquarium. This was a large worm like invertrabrate that moved with a wriggling motion. It was much thicker than any nematode and had a faint brown color to it. There seemed to be segments to its body divided by small tuffs of hair like cilia. Moving along the plant life I also saw the first nematode in the micro aquarium. It appeared to be a Turbatrix Nematode, (Rains and Russell 63) and like the Aeolosoma moved in a wriggling motion. I also saw some more  Euplotes Protista. (Patterson 124) along the edges of the aquarium but significantly less than before. These can be seen in figure 5.
  
           Once I started to view the soil I saw several much larger Aeolosoma. My guess that these soil dwelling aeolosoma were up to 5ml long. These have been by far the largest organisms seen in the aquarium and I will observe if they grow even larger. With these large Aeolosoma near the soil, Several more nematodes were visible. Over all, there was far less of a diversity in micro life. Nematodes and Aeolosoma seemed to dominate the environment when they were previously not seen.
         Last week I took several pictures with the microscope camera of the organisms seen. I briefly misplaced the flash drive these pictures were on and was unable to add them to the earlier blog.
here they are now
 (Fig 1)
 (Pennak 96)
 Fig. 2)
(Rainsis and Russell, 157)

 (Fig. 3)
 (Patterson 149)

 (Fig. 4)
(Pennak 171)

 (Fig, 5)
(Patterson 124)
  


Patterson DJ. 1992. Free-Living Protozoa, A Colour Guide. Washington DC: Manson Publishing.

Pennak RW. 2001. Fresh-Water Invertebrates of the United States. New York (NY): The Ronald     Press Company.

Rainis KG and Russell BJ. 1996. Guide to Microlife. Danbury (CT): Franklin Watts Publishing.