November 4th Observations

Numbers of organisms started diminishing this week. Particularly in the top and middle waters, there were significantly less organisms than I have seen any other week. In the top waters, I saw no more heliozoans, and slim to no more ciliates. The colonies of diatoms, however, still remained in high numbers, in fact, a great bit more than last week. There were only one or two rotifer's to be found as well. It seems that with the less organisms there are, the more algae has formed. I found several strands of algae throughout the entire pond.
The only organisms I saw in the middle waters with the plants were only a few paramecium, halteria, and rotifers. They were all swimming with great motion looking for food, I presume. It would seem as though they are the main predators of the pond.
The muddy waters is a different story, however, since numbers of organisms actually increased. A portion of these numbers can be attributed to dead organisms that have found their way to the bottom of the micro pond. In the lower waters, i observed approximately 12 paramecium, 15 halteria, and 12 carpenter's rulers, and one gastrotrich, and countless colonies of diatoms. These numbers were more than that of last week, save that of the gastrotrich. I did observe one new organism, however. It was a multi celled, non-chlorophyll based flagellate, that is a member of the genus, Peranema. It was rather large, and had a flagellum with a tip that moved the creature with a propeller like motion (Patterson, 51). Please observe this Peranema in the lower left hand corner.