In the second week, I observed a lot more creatures in my aquarium. I was able to successfully observe a planarian due to its shape and its skeletal structure, but was unable to capture on camera. The planiria was able to move by beating its cilia on the ventral dermis which allows the flatworm to swim in the water (Panteleimon). So far that is the only planarian I have seen. Researching, I was able to identify the aquatic beetle that I saw in the first week. I was able to identify that the beetle was a diving beetle called Scarodytes Halensis, due to the beetle having the black dots on its back resembling diving beetles and the general size matched (Pennack). I am still unable to identify the small green beetle as I cannot make a proper identification with my eyes and it moves too fast in the water for me to take a concentrated picture of it. I also observed that the aquatic plants Utricularia gibba and Amblestegium Varium had a lot of algae of some sort growing on them. It seemed to be a small layer that had just started, but it was not there last week.

References

Pennack, RW. 3rd edition Fresh-water Invertabrates of the United States. john Wiley and sons. 1989. pg 456

Panteleimon Rompolas, Ramila S. Patel-King, Stephen M. King Chapter 4-Schmidtea Mediterranea: A Model System for Analysis of Motile Cilia Methods in Cell Biology, Volume 93, 2009, page 82