The first weeks observations were interesting. Things are starting to grow. I had a lot of life and a little bit of death floating around my aquarium. At the top of the water away from the plants things were fairly barren. The only things in the top third of my tank were some blue/green algae, leaf debris, and some cilliates. One intersting thing was the dead algae had a tan color just like dead leaves. I never knew what happened when algae moved on. The only living creature towards the top was my midge. The midge really liked the food pellet Dr. McFarland had in the tank.
As I moved down things started to get a little more lively. I had the upper portions of my plants in here. One thing I hope to keep an eye on is a fern spore I spotted. It was a yellow/brown color and I am interested to see what it does. I also saw some halteria in the middle portion. They were green, spherica, had hairs on them and moved in a springing/bouncing type of motion.
By far the most life was towards the bottom where the plants were more clustered. I had a lot of halteria hanging out towards the bottom which you can see in the picture on the right.
I also spotted a seed shrimp which is called an ostracod. It was green, hairy, and had many cells. It was eating the halteria quite a bit. Hopefully next week I will be able to get a pi
cture of this guy.He should be fairly fat because my tank is swarming with halteria. The coolest looking thing I saw was this rotifer. The species was the Philodina. There is a picture on the right. They are sort of hard to see, but the Philodina had these spinning things towards at the head. It looked like it was hanging like a bat. Some of the other creatures I saw were a gastrotrich, which had some hairs(cilli) seemed clear, and moved slow. It was shaped sort of like a worm.
Stuff I saw and citations:
Leaf Debris
Cilliates
Algae
Halteria
Midge - Dr. McFarland told me that is what I was seeing. He also told me I could identify Halteria by there quick jumping motion and their roundish shape.
Seed Shrimp (ostracod) - Olsen LH, Pedersen J, Pedersen BV. 2001. Small Freshwater Creatures. New York (NY): Oxford. pg. 138.
Spinning Rotifer (Philodena) - Rainis KG, Russell BR. 1996. Guide to Microlife. Danbury (CT): Franklin Watts. pg. 194.
Gastrotrich - Fernando CH. 2002. Tropical Freshwater Zooplanketon. Leiden (Netherlands): Backhuys Publishers. pg. 251.
