11/2/09: This was my first time viewing the micro-aquarium since placing a food pellet in it, so I had an expectation that there would be manyh more creatures in it. This was also my first time using the microscope hooked up to the video recorder.
The most amazing thing I believe I saw was the water around the food pellet. This was a free all-you-can-eat buffet surrounded by at 50 feeding vorticella. The vorticella are cytoplasmic blobs. Around their front they have cilia quickly lashing about pushing water and particles inside its opening and helping to scrape off bacteria. You can see envaculated particles inside of it.
There were also multiple amoebas, other large slow-moving blob. Its organelles or particles move about within it through cyclosis, where microtubules reach out and attach to things and others retract as it slowly slides along.
Somewhat similar were difflugia. These little fellas vary in size because they are essentially trash balls that pick up debris along the way. They feel with plasmodial blobs which absorbs particles and moves it as well.
Trachiosomas were present and abundent, mostly around the dirt, which are somewhat thin and legnthy creatures that chew water and spit it out their side for propulsion.
Large colonial sacks remained as well.
There were also many different types of rotifers, this being what I described as a mouse-like creature on the first observation. There were smaller rounder one, to much longer hot-dog shaped ones that all seemed to have flagella. Here is one with cilia at its mouth, and chewing mechanism slightly behind that, and two flagella at the other end.
The hardest creature to get a picture of was the quick moving halteria, which is simply put a small and quirmy little blob.
Also observed was what looked to be the alga spyrogyra, but is apparently a relative called zygnemia. Whereas spyrogyra was spiral chloroplasts, these have star-shaped ones, two per cell.