Week 4 Observations

I was anticipating this week for there to be a greater number of organisms in the mircoaquarium because of the addition of the food pellet on October 21st, and after looking into the water through a microscope my hypothesis was correct. There were numerous amounts of what I believe are Paramecium sp., although I need to find a confirmation of this with a citation that will follow in a final Bibliography blog post. Along with these organisms, I discovered a small green rectangular organism with tri-angular ends. The green means that it was photosynthetic and I believe it to be some sort of algae forming in the water. I also saw something with the naked eye that was fluttering around the leaves of the Amblestegium sp. When I observed this "critter" through the microscope it looked almost like a clam feeding on the material around the plant. I hope I can find it again next week so I can formally identify it. The last observation that I was able to make, was a new sprout of the Amblestegium sp. growing up from the dirt/soil at the bottom of the aquarium. This made me believe that I have a healthy ecosystem forming within the tiny tank.