Week Four: Reproduction

I was looking forward to viewing this week, because I had a feeling I was going to see more activity since the organisms have had more time to feed and grow since adding the beta food pellet. On Wednesday Nov. 6, I saw A LOT of Bodo saltans through out the tank, but they were a bit more concentrated on the bottom of the tank. When I was in the highest magnification I saw something that looked familiar, but I had to go to a lower magnification to be able to see the whole organism... it was the biggest Cyclops sp. that I had seen yet! Even in the smallest magnification it was still too big for a photo of the whole body!

In my previous blog I said that I hoped to find new organisms, and I did just that! I was able to identify these worm-like organisms called Nematoda (Rains and Russell 1996), also known as Nematodes (thread worms). They were hanging around the bottom of the tank near the dirt and debris, and have a whip-like movement. I moved my tank to a microscope with a camera to take a photo but I was then unable to find it again.

The coolest organism I have seen yet would be a Limnias sp. (Pennak 1938). It is very sensitive to movement in the tank. I know this because it has a shell that it retracts in and out of, and whenever I would tap on the tank in would quickly shoot back down in it's shell then slowly come back out and start its propelling motion. You can see in Video 1 it retracting and coming out of its shell. In the highest magnification I took a photo of the Limnias sp., as shown in Fig. 1

 Video 1

Fig. 1

Having seen an increased number of Bodo, Halteria, Cyclops, and a couple Limnias, it seems like the organisms are starting to reproduce pretty well. I hope to discover something new in the next week!