Week 3

Hello Microblogarium readers! It is currently week 4 of our experiment, but I am posting observations from Thursday, October 31st today. I was in sunny, warm, Tampa, Florida for the end of last week and the beginning of this one, sorry to keep you waiting!

Lets get right into it: Today we saw an explosion of activity after the addition of the beta food tablet. The food tablet was added on October 28th. The following information about the tablet is from Mcfarland, 2013:

"Atison's Betta Food" made by Ocean Nutrition, Aqua Pet Americas, 3528 West 500 South, Salt Lake City, UT 84104. Ingredients: Fish meal, wheat flower, soy meal, krill meal, minerals, vitamins and preservatives. Analysis: Crude Protein 36%; Crude fat 4.5%; Crude Fiber 3.5%; Moisture 8% and Ash 15%.

Upon my first view through the microscope I was assaulted with a view of TONS of what appeared to be small, unicellular organisms. Mcfarland identified them as Colpidium:

Swimming through the sea of Colpidium we found a very nice rotifer.

He was moving by gripping with the 'toes' you see extended out behind him. He would grab with them and scrunch like an inch worm then push himself forward. (Donner 1956).

And now an update from week 1's blog post!

Remember this guy? He was finally identified as a diatom algae known as Surirella (Lund, 1995)! Unfortunately, he might not have made it. He has not been observed since week one. Sorry big guy!

Stay tuned for more updates!