11/7

;many of my organisms are beginning to die off, i have found several dead cyclops in the dirt at the bottom of my micro aguarium. i have noticed a rise in one type of organism, the coleps. coleps is a genus of ciliated prostomatea with barrel shaped bodies. other than that my water level has continued to decrease. pg. 180 fig. 375

11/5 observation

as with my last observation there are many more small round, photosynthetic volvox. there is also a number of additional vorticella im noticing since my last observation. vorticella have a double layer of cilia that they use to pull water and detritus past them while at the same time pulling smaller organisms right into their mouthes, here is a picture of one. pg.125 fig. 232

plants A & B

plant a- fontinalis sp. moss. collection from: natural spring. at carter's mill park, carter mill road, knox county. TN. partial shad exposure.N36 01.168 W83 42.832

plant b- utricularia gibba L. Flowering plant. it's a carnivorous plant. original material from the south side of spain lake( N 35o55 12.35. W088o20 47.00)  camp bella air road, east of sparta TN, grown in watertanks outside the hesler bio building at UTK knox. county.

photosynthetic boom

in the few days since my last observation there has been a large increase in the amount of photosynthetic organisms particularly the number of volvox like the one in this picture. they are spherical and are colored green due to their chloroplast.

water source

I had water from water source # 6, which was the water from the Dean's woods spring creek. it is a spring creek off of woodson drive running tough Dean's woods. It has some partial shady cover. just from the image i have seen of this creek  im am not at all surprised with the amount of life ive found in the water.

Explosion of life

with my first observation since setting up my micro aquarium i have  noticed a literal explosion of life. when first observing my micro aquarium i thought it seemed to be unchanged containing no visible life, however upon placing it under the microscope i learned i was sadly mistaken. my micro aquarium is now bustling with numerous organisms, each vastly different from each other. multicellular , green, photosynthetic organisms tend to be the most numerous. I've taken several photos which once identified I will add with my next post

Blog setup

To setup our blog we each took water from one of several sources and then added small clippings of two separate plants and then we added some soil to the bottom. we then labeled our aquariums based on our table and seat number and stored them so they could develop further for our next observations.