Week 5

I went over to the lab last Tuesday for my final observation.  I did not get back on the camera microscopes because I already had enough pictures from past weeks and others needed to finish.  I was still able to observe the tank for an hour and see what activity was taking place in the other microscopes.

The activity has slowed down quite a bit.  I found a few of my Dero worms again, but some had died and were at the bottom of the MicroAquarium (Pennak, 1953).  Others were around the plants in the MicroAquarium feeding.  For as many as I saw the previous weeks, there did not seem to be many still alive.  Another organism that I observed again was the Euplotes swimming around throughout the tank (Patterson, 1992).  There were still many of these along with many Goniomonas (Patterson, 1992).

Each week, there seemed to be more and more activity until this week.  I am not sure if they ran out of food, lacked light, or what the deal was, but many organisms have recently started to die off.
I saw many other organisms that were very small but difficult to identify.  I was not able to find any new large organisms in the MicroAquarium that I have not identified.  Overall, the observations went well and I enjoyed seeing all of these small organisms and learning about each of them (what they fed on, where they liked to be in the Aquarium, etc).  I did not realize just how many micro-organisms lived in the different water sources until I observed my MicroAquarium these past weeks.