Rather than go week-by-week, allowing 7 days in-between observations, I wanted to see the range of changes that occur overnight over the course of 4 days.
Several weeks after the first observation, the aquarium had underwent many many changes, as expected. With the addition of the food pellet, life abounded. The first thing that confronted my sight as soon as I focused the microscope was a huge mite! It was crawling around in the pond scum, appearing to be consuming the organic material and breaking down the matter.
The one pictured is a smaller, dead one than the living one that I lost sight of in the transfer to the camera-microscope. I identified them as Hydrozetes, an aquatic soil mite with a life span of 30 to 80 days (Smith). In addition, there were many shelled rotifers among the insectivorous plant and moss swimming in and out of the tendrils. Their size was quite small, and they were yellow-brownish to clear in color. They moved with the aid of their single flagella.
The rotifer is present in the upper left-hand corner in the picture at left.Lastly, I saw one vorticella, sitting in the open water, completely solitary except for one part of it spinning, most likely sweeping food into its mouth. The many small ciliates present would be caught up in the force of the vorticella and sucked through the current it was making. How interesting.
Citation Information:
Smith, Douglas Grant. Pennak's Freshwater Invertebrates of the United States. John Wiley and Sons, Inc, 2001.
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