Week 4

Immediately after looking through the microscope I noticed a large increase in microorganism activity. Most organisms I found were the same. There seemed to be hundreds of Tachysoma moving very quickly around the microorganism. Over 70 were just feeding around the food pellet that was added a week ago, with some other ciliates. As I explored around the whole aquarium I noticed that the amount of Vorticella had increased substantially as well. They seemed to be grouped more in this case, and in all parts of the aquarium as opposed to just attached to one of the plants. There was also a large increase in the number of Mayorella which were all moving slowly and had very odd shapes, as expected. There was also an increase in diatoms, maybe triple the amount there was in week 2. Although being tripled, there were still not as many diatoms as the other organisms, but it was still a noticeable increase. There was a new type of diatom I discovered called a Pinnularia (Patterson figure 6). This organism seemed to glide across the aquarium very slowly. It had a distinguishing characteristic in its siliceous "shell or frustule."This microorganism was found near the bottom of the aquarium and I was able to find 5 or 6 throughout the whole aquarium, but all were in this general area. For the final observation this week I will be searching for new organisms to take note of and possibly get some pictures of the Pinnularia.