Winogradsky column, Department of Biological Applications & Technology, Ioannina

Hello everyone,
I'm Any Athanasopoulou from university of Ioannina in Greece. I received the mixture of water and mud from the bank of Voidomatis river (Voidomatis bridge) on 10.23.2015. My column also contains enrichment substrates, such as pieces of paper, 1 egg with its shell and 1/2 sachet of baking powder. First I made a mixture of the river mud, the enrichment substrates and water and put it in the bottle with a funnel (in order to cover 1/3 of the plastic bottle ). Then I added extra mud till 2/3 of the bottle to be filled and finally I filled up with water. Since my column was ready, I put it in the attic of my house, close to a western window, so that it's exposed to sunlight and room temperature (average growth temperature 20^ο C). 

So far most of the water column is colored bright red probably by a large population of purple non-sulphur bacteria. I'm expecting growth inhibition of sample's psychrothropic bacteria, since the growth temperature is significantly higher than the river's cold water. At the expense of these is expected the developing of different varieties of bacteria, that are favored by this temperature change.

here is my bottle at the 8th week of the experiment:

and here is my bottle at the 13th week of the experiment:

where, we can see not only the red-brown colored water, but also a green zone developing at the upper layer of the column (probably cyanobacteria).

Marialena Kafritsa University of Ioannina
 Winogradsky column

Here I present my data from Voidomatis river (23^th October 2015) . In order to manufacture my Winogradsky column I used two bottles (1,5L). Both of my columns contain pieces of paper, 1 egg with its shell and baking powder. In one bottle I had extra sulfur source by adding vitamins. I use the column without the sulfur source as control in order to observe any changes with the addition of sulfur. Both of the columns are exposed to sunlight and room temperature.

This is the procedure I used to construct my winogradsky columns:
I took mud from the river and mixed it with my nutrients and placed into 1/3 of my bottle. In one bottle I added sulfur vitamin pills. The other 2/3 had mud without nutrients. Lastly in the rest of the bottle I added river water.

Here is a photo of the sulfur added bottle (day 1)

And here are my columns after 36 days
 (Right bottle is control and left bottle is the one with the added sulfur)

The sediment in both columns seems a little darker and the river water is starting to get a little greener because of phytoplakton photosynthesis. There are no noticeable differences between the two bottles yet.