Cadiz, 1B: WINOGRANDSKY COLUMN – GROUP 1B – 1ST AND 2ND WEEK

Hi everyone!

We are three students of Biotechnology in the UCA and this is our first post about our Winograndsky column.

We made the Winograndsky column on Tuesday, 3^rd March in the microbiology laboratory. For that, we filled 2/3 of an Aquarius bottle with muddy sediments from San Pedro River, mixed with CaCO₃, FeSO₄ and paper (cellulose), as a source of carbon for autotrophic microorganisms. After that, we added two centimetres of water.

This project last 8 weeks, so we take turns to have the bottle every, although we’re going to change that from next week and we’re going to take turns every two weeks to not move the bottle to much. The first week I had the bottle and the second week Esperanza had it.

1^st WEEK (3^rd – 10^th):  The early days mostly part of the water was on the surface and appeared small white worms in the mud, but after three days they died. The fourth day I saw small clams on the surface and a red zone at the top of the mud on the sun side of the bottle and small black points in the lower part of the mud, mostly on the sunside but there was also on the dark side. They are maybe bacterias. Here there are some photos of the bottle during the week:

2^nd WEEK (11^th- 17^th): As we can see, the bottle isn’t directly expose to the sun and some days like last week were cloudy, cold, and even some days rained so the microorganism didn’t grow up so much. This week, the surface tuned out red and we could see some gas bubbles. We think the bubbles are perhaps oxygen bubbles from autotrophic microorganism. The last days of the week appeared some small seaweeds too. Here there are some photos:

                                                       

Dark side

Sun side