Week 3

I returned to the lab today to check on my MicroAquarium.  Needless to say, the Beta Food Pellet that Dr. McFarland dropped in the water had the organisms excited and moving around this week.  I was able to stay a while today and observe much of the action taking place.

As I said before, Dr. McFarland inserted a Beta Food Pellet into the water on Friday October 25, 2013.  The pellet was called "Atison's Betta Food" made by Ocean Nutrition, Aqua Pet Americas, 3528 West 500 South, Salt Lake City, UT 84104 (McFarland, 2013).  The ingredients were as follows: Fish meal, wheat flower, soy meal, krill meal, minerals, vitamins and preservatives (McFarland, 2013). The analysis of the beta food included: Crude Protein 36%; Crude fat 4.5%; Crude Fiber 3.5%; Moisture 8% and Ash 15% (McFarland, 2013).

Before I could even get started really good I spotted a Chaetogaster sp. worm (Figure 1).  It was a fairly large worm with a round tail end (Rainis & Russell, 1996).  I identified the Chaetogaster in the book entitled Guide to Microlife on pages 226 and 229 (Rainis & Russell, 1996).  I followed this worm around for about 45 minutes before moving on.  It was enjoying feeding on the plants I inserted the first day of lab in the middle of the tank.  I counted at least 5 or 6 of these Chaetogasters throughout the tank today which really surprised me because I could not find any last week.

The remainder of the lab today, I was observing another very intriguing worm, the Dero (Figures 2,3,&4).  This was by far the largest organism in the tank that I have seen yet.  It was large enough that I could sit and watch it do waving motions in the tank and see its movements from just the light shining on it under the microscope.  As seen in Fresh Water Invertebrates of the United States on page 291, Figure 185, I was able to identify the Dero by its large appendages on its tail (Pennak, 291).  The Dero looked to be feeding on some of the plants I placed in the water.  It also looked to be feeding on some of the smaller organisms in the tank (in the middle section of the plant).  It was kind of an intimidating worm to look at because it was very large for that small of a MicroAquarium.

There were other smaller organisms moving around everywhere today, but I did not have time to zoom in and identify what they were.  Even the top section of the tank had a lot more action than last week.  I am not sure if there was any location I passed in the tank today that I did not see at least one organism moving around.  Still, I did not see any dead organisms in the bottom of the tank, but I could have easily overlooked them since I was following these large worms around all day.

I look forward to coming back in next week and observing all of the action taking place.

Figure 1 shows a Chaetogaster sp. full body shot in the middle of the tank (Rainis & Russell, 1996).

Figure 2 shows the appendages on the tail end of a Dero sp. (Pennak, 1953).

Figure 3 shows the head and mouth parts of the Dero sp. (Pennak, 1953).

Figure 4 is hard to see but the far left of the image shows the wide appendages on this particular Dero sp. (Pennak, 1953).