Week 3 Observations

Initial Observations:

The first thing I noticed about my micro-aquarium without even placing it under the microscope was the large bug larva swimming around in circles, throwing up all my soil and knocking into my plants haphazardly. Also, my water level had gone down significantly.

Observations:
Upon further observations I identified the larva as a Diptera species, or mosquito larva. It was also swimming around eating many of my rotifers.

This is the head of the Diptera, eating some micro-organisms in the soil at the bottom of my tank.



I also noticed a cyclops that I didn't notice before, which swam in the middle of the tank during all my observations.

Upon further inspection of the "bladders" on my bladderwort, I noticed that some of them were crawling with paramecium. The spun in circles inside the plant structure constantly.

This is a picture of the bladderwort at 4x magnification.

But at a 10X magnification you can see all the little paramecium inside the bladderwort, they look like little pieces of rice.

Those are the most interesting things I noticed in my micro-aquarium in the third week of obervations.

Citations:

Patterson D. 2003. Free-living Freshwater Protozoa. Washington, DC: Manson publishing. 400 p.