Observation #5

Well... here I am at my final blog post for my MicroAquarium! I really should not be putting an exclamation point due to this project being "bitter sweet"-- this project was really starting to really shape up to be a cool project to do! I was amazed at the growth changes in my MicroAquarium over the past 4 weeks, it was crazy to even think how fast time really does move!

Anyhow, today I was really excited to go into lab and do our final lab observation.  I was most curious about how much growth and life form changes would have happened in its final week of "rest" without any observations.  I decided to use a regular compound microscope for my final observation, mostly due to the fact that I thought that my last weeks observations were really cool, fun, and different to look at than my previous three had been- so I decided to stick with the regular compound microscope so that I would see the best "overall" change and result of my MicroAquarium.

However, I guess I will break that sad news that my final observation did not go as accord to plan/hopes as I would have liked for them to go... I was hoping for some crazy things to happen and be able to see a massive growth of my MicroAquarium but unfortunately that did not happen.  I am not sure if what I saw was not in enough detail and my "massive growth" that I was looking for really did happen, just on a very small microorganism level.  For the only "major" organism that I was able to see was the my Cyclops sp. friend  from last week.  However, there was a more hope established and excitement raised when I did make a new discovery to my MicroAquarium- the Ostracods sp. or commonly called a Seed Shrimp!

The Ostracod sp. orgamism took up a lot of my time in just amazement in watching him/her move throughout the water. Reading "Guide to Microlife" by Rain & Russell confirmed my observation in that what I was observing was actually a Ostracod sp., given that the information provided to me confirmed the shape 'like a flatten seed', the movement as 'a slow creep to rapid bouncing or scurrying' and having 'bivalved shells' (Rains, Russell, 210).  I was really fascinated by the- what I would call- 'fingers/legs' of the Ostracod sp. and how much they looked and behaived like an actual shimp that I am used to seeing, yet alone eat!

Even though I did spend most of my time watching the Ostracod sp. I was able to take a picture of it from my phone, through the objective lens, and post it below to the blog, hence why I am unable to post 'Andrew Valk' and 'Ostracod sp.' text right upon the picture itself.  Mostly, however, I really did not see the level microorganism life that I was hoping to observe, which I guess is a good thing! Meads Quarry could indeed be less occupied by microorganisms that I had originally thought it would be!

Overall, I had a great time observing my MicroAquarium over these now past 5 weeks.  I really enjoyed actually seeing what kind of life forms was actually out there and being able to identify them and take pictures of them! I wish the best for my little critters in my MicroAquarium- for the odds be ever in your favor! Good luck, thanks for the memories, and I am sure I will be encountering you again sometime very soon in my lifetime!

Above- An ostracods or more commonly called a Seed Shrimp.  Picture taken through the objective lens of my microscope.

Observation #4

 

I was super excited to come in today and observe my MicroAquarium after another week of sitting in Hesler Biology lab.  I was curious to (hopefully) see if more activity would be present, in terms of organism growth and development.

 

 

However, as most scientist know, our experiments do not usually go accordingly as we think, and that is what happened to me today during my observation.  As I arrived in the lab room where the MicroAquariums were being kept, I noticed that all of the microscopes that had cameras attached to them were taken and that there was a line of 2 deep on most microscopes, so I had to settle for a regular compound microscope without a camera for the first time during my observations of my MicroAquarium.  I was a little bit "bummed" out since I would not be able to observe really closely ,and thus in detail, the organisms that I had in my MicroAquarium, due to the fact that the microscopes with cameras attached had a line on each one.  However, we can't "win" at everything!

 

Nevertheless, I was actually super glad that I got to not use the camera microscopes because once I sat down with my MicroAquarium on the regular compound microscope (the one without the cameras attached) I got to observe my MicroAquarium  from a different "angle" and viewpoint than what I have done previously on during my observations.  It was actually like looking at a brand new and different MicroAquarium! Whenever I used the camera microscope, I was always looking for the smallest details and organisms present and trying to capture a photograph of them with them camera.  I guess one can say that I had a "narrow mindset" and was thinking to small.  Luckly, my mind was able to change directions today from viewing strictly from the regular compound microscopes!

 

Right away, I was able to really see my MicroAquarium from the large point of view.  I was no longer focusing on the smallest organisms or trying to zoom in on the leaves of my Amblestegium varium,   Fontinalis sp. moss , or the plant Utricularia gibba L. species (McFarland, 2013).  Rather,  I was able to take a broader look at the plants, mosses, and organisms from "above', if you will, and that made my observation so much better! Even though I was able to see physically a lot organisms that I could not make out with detail what they were exactly or how their body structure was set up- thus making me not be able to identify 99% of the organisms that I saw- I still loved being able to observe my MicroAquarium from this different point of view.

 

 

It did see like though that there was a lot of activity present in the MicroAquarium and that I did have a lot of smaller organisms moving around the MicroAquarium.  I found this really fascinating and it taught to not focus on the details as  much, because in the grand scheme of things, you could miss so much or even your goal/objective of your experiment if you focus strictly on one aspect of your project/experiment.  However, with saying that, I was able to locate, distinguish, and identify with Dr. McFarland's help the Cyclops sp.  that was moving around in the bottom left of my MicroAquarium, right above the soil that I extracted from the Mead's Quarry water sample container in week one (Crook and McFarland, 2013).   After many unsuccessful attempts, I was able to finally capture a good picture with my camera on my phone through the objective lens on my compound microscope! Hey-- I was really pleased and excited that I was able to do this, for it is a lot harder than it looks!  I was not able to type "Cyclops sp."  nor "Andrew Valk" on the picture itself due to me uploading it from my phone and not the computer, so hopefully my word and trust will do in that I took this picture myself from my camera!

 

 

Overall, I think the Cyclops sp. was the "big highlight" of my observation-- mostly due to that fact that it was the first time that I noticed this organism in my MicroAquarium and I was able to successfully take a picture of it through the objective lens --even though being able to view my MicroAquarium from this different landscape orientation was pretty neat in itself! Overall, I had a really successful observation #4 and I hope that they will continue to get better and better as time goes along! 

Picture above is a Cyclops sp. taken from my phone through the microscope lens (objective).
 

Observation #3

I got to proceed with my third observation on my MicroAquarium since I constructed it a few weeks back.  As a quick recap, the past few weeks I had been unable to really observe and see much activity in my MicroAquarium, mostly due to no real food source present and the organism were just floating around in the MicroAquarium.  It has been difficult to search the MicroAquarium for a hour or so and observe not much activity.  Lucky, this week's observation was much different!

 

The reason of my joy, and anticipation, of this weeks observation was that after my second observation, Dr. McFarland placed a food pellet into my MicroAquarium. Even though  I could not see directly the food pellet, for it had already dissolved, the presence of the food pellet being placed was easily known initially from the first look! I was able to get access to the microscope with the camera attached and as I observed my MicroAquarium, I quickly noticed that the level of activity in the MicroAquarium drastically changed from last week to this current week! So exciting!!

 

Right away my eyes were quickly drawn to the multiply clusters of Lembadion sp. (Rainis, Russell 1996) that made their presence known all across my MicroAquarium.  I spent most of my time observing the Lembadion sp. - mostly due to volume (in numbers) of Lembadion sp.  in the MicroAquarium compared to the other species/organisms present - which allowed for me to be able to get some good pictures of them, like the one pictured below in Figure 2!

 

However, one of the coolest observations that I made is shown in Figure 1, a Chaetogaster sp. The past observations that I have made I have not been able to observe any 'larger' organisms besides than the Lambadion sp. (this week) and the Colpidium sp. (last week), so when I saw the Chaetogaster sp. towards the end of my observation, I became really excited!! Yay-- I may actually have some 'real life' in my MicroAquarium! Reading the Guide to Microlife book, I learned that the Chaetogaster sp. prefer to live in muddy debris along streams, ponds, marshes, and soggy-gounds (Rainis, Russell 226).  Furthermore, I also found out that they their body is divided into segments, where the first two segments serve as the head (Rainis, Russell 226). I loved getting to look at the Chaetogaster sp. whip its body region around and curl back on itself-- from doing so I was able to snap a picture of its whole body, as shown below in Figure 1. 

 

Finally, I was also able to observe a Peranema sp. in my MicroAquarium as well.  I found these little fellows really exciting to watch because they seemed to glide through the water rather than swim while having a long single flagellum protruding from the frontier region of their body (Patterson 52)!

 

Overall, I was really pleased with my third observation this week! I was able to see a increase in activity in my MicroAquarium from last week to this week, plus an increase in species actively present in the MicroAquarium! It was cool to really see what a difference a food source could do/can make in an environment-- hopefully it will continue to increase as the weeks progress!    

 

 

Figure 1. Displays the Chaetogaster sp. full body length.

 

Figure 2. Displays Lembadion sp. around pieces of the added food pellet. Note the large vacuole.  

Bibliography

Cook R. and McFarland K.2013. General Botany 111 Laboratory Manual.15th edition.
          University of Tennessee. 155-156 p.

McFarland, Kenneth [Internet] Botany 111 Fall 2013. [cited 10/22/2013]. Available from:                                      http://botany1112013.blogspot.com

Patterson DJ. 1996. Free-Living Freshwater Protozoa. 5th impression. Academic Press. p. 52

Rainis K. and Russell B. 1996. Guide to Microlife. Academic Press. p. 210, 226.

Initial Set-Up

Our set ups of our Biology 111 Term Projects (MicroAquarium) were made last week-- sorry for the delay in posting due to Fall Break! Just as a little tangent, I lead a Alternative Fall Break trip (AFB) to Greensboro, NC to be true volunteers by giving us our fall break to do community service over the break! So my mind was on that for the whole week/weekend and I was unable to  get to this blog post until now!

Anywho, so last week we set up our MicroAquarium! I was really excited to finally get to this point in the  the class just because I have never done something like this before-- both the experiment and the blog! So I was really excited to set it up! In the lab room, there was 12 different sites that Dr. McFarland collected water and debris from around Knoxville.  Personally, I chose site #5 mostly because it was right in from of where I was siting.  However, once I found that it was from Meads Quarry on Island Home Avenue (5. Meads Quarry, Island Home Ave, Knox Co. Tennessee Partial shade exposure Rock Quarry N35 57.162 W83 51.960 880 10/13/2013, I knew that that was the site that I wanted to set up my MicroAauarium in- mostly due to the fact that I had been there before and I was curious as to what was actually in the water!

I was able to obtain a a glass tank, a stand holder, and a lid for my MicroAquarium.  In order to be able to identify my specific MicroAquarium against the rest,  we labeled them with different color stickers, mine happen to be red, yellow, yellow and put out initials on them (lab section, table I was at, seat at that table)(Crook and McFarland, 2013)! Next, was the fun part- actually setting up our MicroAquarium! Using a pipet, I was able to extract soil from the bottom on the larger bowl of water/debris that came from Dr. McFarlands sample form Meads Quarry (Crook and McFarland, 2013).  I continued upward in the larger bowl to collect water and organisms that were floating along the the "middle" of the bowl, and then lastly I collected water samples from the upper/top layer of the large water bowl (Crook and McFarland, 2013).  From doing this, even though the organism would be floating uniformly in the bowl, I was able to collect a variety of organisms in my MircoAquarium (Crook and McFarland, 2013).  Lastly, mosses and a plant was added to my Microorganism.  I was able to add the Amblestegium varium (Hedwig) Lindberg moss (Moss. Collection from: Natural spring. at Carters Mill Park, Carter Mill Road, Knox Co. TN. Partial shade exposure. N36 01.168 W83 42.832. 10/13/2013), the Fontinalis sp. moss (Moss. Collected from: Holston River along John Sevier Hwy under I 40 Bridge Partial shade exposure Holston River water Shed N36 00.527 W83 49.549 823 ft 10/13/2013), and the plant Utricularia gibba L. (Flowering plant. A carnivorous plant. Original material from south shore of Spain Lake (N 35o55 12.35" W088o20' 47.00), Camp Bella Air Rd. East of Sparta Tn. in White Co. and grown in water tanks outside of greenhouse at Hesler Biology Building. The University of Tennessee. Knox Co. Knoxville TN. 10/13/2013) (McFarland, 2013).  These organisms will help promote a suitable growing environment and  provide the necessary growing conditions for the organisms in my MircoAquarium (McFarland, 2013).

 As I completed my MicroAquarium, I was able to conduct my first observation by using a light microscope.  I was unable to find a lot of organisms, mostly some ciliates I believe, but I am unable to be 100% certain due to we were just observing our MicroAquariums and we did not have in depth resources and training available to provide an answer. 

Observation #2

 

Today was my first 'real' observation of my MicroAquarium using a light microscope and taking notes on what I saw.  I can say that I was pretty excited in finally getting to see everything in my MicroAquarium for a longer period of time and really studying in detail what I observed! I am also going to assume that as I continue along in this blog, my posts will become more in depth and I will be able to start to get what I need to in these as I start to figure out what I need to look for and what I can find in my MicroAquarium over time, so bear with be for these first couple of weeks!

 

 

It should be known that science experiments do not always go as planned ... or expected, and that was the case today in my first 'real' observation.  I was hoping to be able to really see some good organisms in my MicroAquarium using the light microscope, but even when  I switched to the light microscope that had a camera on it, I was still unable to be successful in finding a lot of organisms and life forms in my MicroAquarium.  However, one of the most noticeable organisms in my MicroAquarium was the Colpidium species, which the video below shows their movement and body system by using the light microscope with a camera.  Dr. McFarland and I managed to locate many 'families/groups' around the MicroAquarium.  Colpidiums have a mouth, ciliary organelles, and most noticeably- both a large vacuole and a contractile vacuole near the center of the cell (Patterson, 171). One other distinguishing feature of Colpidiums  that we were able to take notice of, and thus, help distinguish that it was a Colpidium was both is macro- and micro- nucleus along with the cilia that it has on the outer rim of its body (Patterson, 1996).

 

 

My observations and time mostly during this observation was spent on watching the groups of Colpidiums and learning about the light microscope with the camera attached, along with the system that it operates under.  I was able to successfully take a couple of pictures and insert the video below of Colpidiums into my blog- hopefully it will provide a good representation of what Colpidiums look like and a fun way to learn!