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.