November 12th, 2008 - Observations

The aquarium seems to have many more diatoms in almost every spot. Many are alive but even more appear to be dead while others feed on them. Astereinella were also spotted along the edge of the tank. They are the star shaped diatoms that are not motile and there for must be attached to something. A second midge was also located from where I thought it would be considered out of place. It was up in the plants at the top of the aquarium. It appeared to be slightly smaller than the other midge that I have been following. They both seem to continue to grow larger (not fully visible under low power 40x) and more defined as well as gaining a more brown color. When I looked at the midge under 100x i realized that there were microorganisms attached to the midge like the smaller fish sticking with a shark. The bag traps also seem to be consuming more organisms and growing more defined. The algae and protozoa have seemed to jumped in number as well. I can watch them feeding on other protozoa and diatoms at the bottom of the tank. I was unable to identify it but there has been an abundance of a filamentous colony of photosynthetic organisms that are motile.