who are these guys??? as you can see theyre all black but have orange upper lips. Found in East Tennessee creek. The first one is covered in silt but they are all smooth and black.
UPDATE:
It's a pleurocera gabbiana! i used this key:
Dichotomous Key
they're all the same and there are hundreds of them in our creek. they all have orange mouths like in the first pic and they're all black. the second one pictured is the largest in the tank at about 1.5 inches
that is a pea clam, confirmed. there are 2 others of the same size and an older one. do i need to ditch this jar, or is there any possible way of keeping these guys alive in here???
I wanted to share something cool and see if anyone has any further insight into the consequences of this process !
when I added an aquatic plant into my jar, I wanted to anchor it so i dropped a shell i'd collected earlier on it, partially to provide my lil snails with some extra calcium :-). A couple of days later i noticed this creamy-white flaky scaly stuff around the shell. I was rly weirded out but I remembered calcium and phosphorous mix to make calcium phosphate, and I believe this is what i'm looking at!!! Clearly, I had a high level of phosphates in my jar and i'm hoping this process could help with algae, diatoms, and providing my creatures with a healthy environment. Calcium Phosphate is not soluble by water so i don't have to worry about it leaching back into the water.
this was not in my jar when i left 3 days ago, the leaf has been dead for awhile so i dont think its coming from that. if u can see, it is also at the top of the leaf rather than the base, where the stem would be.
if u need more info lmk. i'm getting pretty good at identifying things on my own but i can't even begin to describe this thing? lol
pls ignore the sound. it is copepod shaped but seems to have fin like appendages?
I have no clue what the first worm is. I think the second, thin one in the same clip is a tubifex worm that isn't wiggling in the silt (get back to it ur on the clock!). I believe the little blue guy is a water mite. I also have a few planarians ominously swarming a baby snail. the last clip shows more detail of the little guys in the jar. i'm not good at identifying the tiny ones and i don't have a macro lens, but i think i have ostracods, water fleas, and i have seen a couple copepods.
this is my second attempt at an ecosphere, the first was a creek sample that died in 2 weeks, mainly bc i accidentally left it outside when traveling i think, and bc at the time the weather was harsh and going from 80 degrees to freezing.
Anyway, this time i took a sample from a pond! i appear to have one adult bladder snail (in the video he is skimming the surface) and several little babies. as you can see, there are LOTS of ostracods.
last night i noticed approximately 10 little white worms on the glass and was interested to see what they were. i found out they're planarians. i also had a little snail leech. i panicked, i know we're supposed to let the jars run their course but my adult snail was getting plotted on and it made me cringe to see, so i took out all the planarians i could find with tweezers, being as careful as possible to get them in one piece, or take all the segments out. i also got the leech. the rest ran away (i guess they're smart!) ive see a few still in there coming and going. Ik ostracods have a rep for harrassing snails, and planarians are some of their biggest opps. do you guys think i did damage to the flow of the ecosystem? and do you think my snails stand a chance in this environment, now that there are less planarians?
Me and my bf got together in december of 2023. he met my family in the same month and has been pretty involved since. I am very happy and things have been pretty great. The thing is, sometimes we fight and we do have minor issues. I have PTSD from past abusive relationships and when flashbacks happen i can become extremely aggressive and then apologetic right after. We can both be impatient sometimes (not most of the time), and he has problems with defensiveness. overall we get along, he treats me well, he is very sweet and funny, and gets me nice gifts.
The other day we were all at my parents house celebrating my mom and sister's birthdays (they're in the same weekend) and me and my bf and mom were outside. they were both complaining about how i don't charge my phone and he called me a dumbass and may have took the joking too far, but for us that's not really a boundary, at least til now. I didn't take the situation as disrespectful, but my mom did. she called me the next day basically asking if i was safe in my relationship. she also accused him of rolling his eyes at my sister. (he would never intentionally do this. with how receptive he was to everything, he vehemently denied this and i did not see it either. however, since that's what was perceived, he has been nonetheless apologetic) She told me all this and i got really upset and was crying and freaking out on her, I hung up and called my boyfriend and told him everything. He took a second and apologized and said he felt really bad for putting on that impression to my parents and that he wanted to talk to them and apologize- he did. then my mom kept calling me saying he needed to talk to my sister. i told him abt it and he texted her an apology and she said she wanted to call him and for all of us to talk later tn when she gets off.
I do feel like she could have separate things to say abt hearing our arguments since me and her live together and she likely has overheard some. Im not sure. I know im not worried about how he will handle it. Personally i just feel like they went about this in the most triggering way possible to me, knowing i've been in actual abusive situations before and have PTSD.
Their worries don't reflect how I feel at all. It is extremely difficult regardless because i've been in situations that warped my ability to fully trust my judgement and although i believe i have the capability now to make good decisions for myself, part of my trauma is that that doubt creeps in, and this situation has not helped.
My family is unfortunately the type that thinks i can do no wrong, and that is not ideal in this situation, because they think if they see conflict in my relationship, it's all my boyfriend. In reality, even tho we both lose our tempers, we have very respectful and fair ways of communicating why we got upset and who was at fault and both of us are always able to admit we were wrong at least within the hour.
I just don't know what to do about this situation and how to act when I have this talk with my sister. I know my bf is just going to take everything that she says to heart and apologize, but if she implies that he is harming me or controlling or abusive in anyway i don't know if ill be able to handle it. Do i have a right to be upset? how the fuck do i begin to even navigate this at all?
Tl;dr: my family is staging something of an informal intervention about my bfs behavior (took a joke too far by lovingly calling me a dumbass about not charging my phone, also i guess he accidentally rolled his eyes at my sister) and our relationship but i don't think it is that serious/called for and don't know what to do.