Growing

As week two came quickly around, I managed to make another quick visit to the Little Chatt I have going on. (For those that are confused, the Tennessee State Aquarium (most well known in the state) is in Chattanooga. Therefore I call my aquarium a miniature version of that). Let me tell you, things have changed since last week. The overall look of the aquarium is even a little different. To me, it seems, the plant has grown and the water level has risen just a teeny bit.

There were moving organisms floating around in the water. They were moving in a very slow manner, almost trying to peck at things as they go about their merry way. Some were just hanging out by the plant stem, and some others were moving around on an actual stem and inside the stem.

I did see, though, many multicellular organisms. They were mostly swimming around casually. I didn't see too many single celled. There were many midges and rotifers around the plant. TONS of protozoa lingered around, along with bacteria, but there was plenty of them at the bottom of the aquarium near the dirt. There weren't many chlorophyll colored organisms. The midges and rotifers were green, but the Eupolotes I saw and euglenas I saw floating around were clear, and you could see straight through the.

These organisms had various habitats. Some liked to hover around the plants edge, some buried themselves insdie the stem and some moved in, around and out the plant to get to stuff. It just depended on the organism and what they were doing. There were some organisms that hardly moved at all; they were merely just "chillin".

Overall, I was able to identify five organisms. I questioned a lot of them, but I'm sure i will be able to identify them here within the next few weeks. The plant grew in size, as I said before. There are more organisms. The number of rotifers increased and there are a few more midges than there was last week. Fortunately, I could not spot dead organisms at the bottom of the tank. I'm sure they were down there, but I could not see where they were hiding.

Week 1: My Little Chattanooga

Last Wednesday was the first day of the MicroAquarium project for my Botany 111 class. As many of you may be asking "What is a MicroAquarium?", it's essentially a small aquarium but set up through a very small glass tank that is rested upon a stand holder [see below].

Maybe the picture does justice? Maybe not, either way we set that up. Inside of that glass tank contains dirt and water found in a local creek. Dean's Woods - SpringCreek to be exact. It is off Woodson Dr running through Dean's Woods Road frontage in Knox Co. Tennessee.

I took a sample from that water source, out of twelve to choose from, and the dirt came with. I used two different plant sources though, Amblestegium varium (Hedwig) Lindberg. It is a Moss found from a natural spring at Carters Mill Park off of Carter Mill road in Knox County, Tennessee. There was partial shade exposure when collected. Another was Utricularia Gibbi, and that is a flowering plant, carnivous, originally found off from the south shore of Spain Lake, Camp Bella Air Rd which is just east of Sparta, Tennessee. It's also grown in water tanks outside of the Hesler Biology Building, in a greenhouse at the University of Tennessee.

 As detailed as that was, that doesn't compare to what I observed under the microscope once we set the whole thing up. I noticed that there were moving objects inside the plant; they were green colored, but there were also non-green organisms moving around as well. What I was able to identify were Rotifers hovering and hugging onto the plain. They are worm like organisms that open up at the bottom end and spin up to collect other organisms floating around and spitting some back out. There was also bacteria moving very rapidly throughout the water, and I also saw these organisms [I could not quite figure out what they were] and they were inside the plant, moving in and around on its insides. I want to say it was a water bear, but I cannot say for sure.

 Week one was very interesting. I didn't gather the most of information since 90% of the time was setting it up. I was able to, however, observe and record the start up and beginnings to my MicroAquarium - My Little Chattanooga.

 Works Cited McFarland, Kenneth [Internet] Botany 111 Fall 2013. [cited 2013 October 22]. Available from http://botany1112013.blogspot.com