November 13 Observations

I'm afraid my observations from last week were a little skewed because i made the error of adding water to my micro-aquarium before observing, thus diluting my source and making my organisms much harder to find. Hey, it's science. These things happen. So when i observed my pond today without adding any water, there seemed to be much more organisms than there were last week, but in all actuality, there were probably less. This week they were just easier to find. That is my disclaimer for this week's observations. Take it as you will.
In the top waters, i found much more diatoms than before, mainly the accordian shaped ones. I also saw about four epistylis and three rotifers, also a bit more than last week. The abundance of blue green algae was overwhelming. My little organisms are finding it difficult to find much space to swim around.
In the middle waters I continued to find a variety of creatures. These included heliozoans(3), paramecium(5), and halteria (10+). The blue green algae continued to dominated this area as well, but i did observe one new creature. Known as Euplotes, this is a single celled ciliate, and has a rows of cirri which allow it to walk along certain surfaces (Patterson, 124). I only saw one of these.
In the muddy waters, i noticed even more of an abundance of carpenter's rulers, over ten to be more specific. Most of the organisms in this arena were colonized masses of diatoms and algae. The halteria continued to roam about here, as well as some rotifers and paramecium. However, the most large celled organism i saw was the Tachysoma. This creature is a single celled hypotrich with dorsal bristles that aid in its movement (Patterson, 124). It is also chlorophyll based. Attached is a self taken picture of the Tachysoma, just to the left of his friend the carpenter's ruler.