Membranes in Tank Water - What would they be?

[abrogard]

We have a rainwater tank which we use for drinking water and I was surprised to see grey membranes floating in it the other day.

Only small. Typically maybe 20mm x 5mm. Grainy grey appearance, fairly transparent because very thin.

I looked at them with my microscope but up to 600x I was unable to see anything moving, anything that looked like life at all and no structures, no filaments. But there were many dark dots that I couldn't resolve.

Anyone have any idea what this stuff could be?

[Peter]

Hi Abrogard,
Can you tell us more about your setup, objective magnification and numerical aperture, your mode of view eg. brightfield, oblique illumination, phase contrast etc.? Is it possible for you to view this with an oil immersion objective with a numerical aperture 1.2 - 1.3 (preferably Phase contrast or DIC)? This may enable you to give a more detailed description of your specimen.
I would tentatively suggest bacterial colonies.
Hope this helps.
Peter.

[abrogard]

Hi, thanks for the response.
First thing to say is I'm an untutored, inexperienced, amateur at microscopy.

I have a Nikon Model G.

The light source is the original Nikon light source which is a focusable dimmable, lamp which shines onto the substage mirror.

I try to use Kohler brightfield illumination but I'm having some trouble setting it up properly.

There are 4x, 10x, 20x, 40x and 100x objectives. The 100x is oil immersion.

There are 5x, 10x and 15x oculars.

Today I tried to get a good look and took pictures at 60x, 300x, 600x, 1000x and 1500x.

I just uploaded these pics to Google Photos (Picasa, as was) and hopefully you'll be able to see them at this link:
https://plus.google.com/photos/11077559 ... 8TA3vmauwE

I don't know how to set up phase contrast or DIC but I'll try find out and do.

[gekko]

Welcome to the forum! I cannot help with your question (I'm sure Peter is right). The two large objects: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/assSE ... -h209-p-no are, I think, grains of pine pollen (Peter will be able to correct me-- in fact, as I remember, when I was starting in this hobby and I found those, it was Peter who taught me what they were ).

[billbillt]

Is you water tank sealed from outside critters?.. Look something lie frog eggs to me... Just MHO...

[billbillt]

Or maybe mosquito eggs... Mosquitoes will go to a great amount of trouble to lay eggs in water...

[Peter]

Hi Abrogard,
The light coloured spheres with dark hemispheres attached certainly appear to be pine pollen; the feather shaped object in the last two photos is a scale from a moth or butterfly (lepidoptera).
I suspect some bacteria has captured these (and probably more organic material) in a loose gelatinous matrix and is using them as a nutrient source. The bacterium will be very small and probably very low contrast in brightfield and so will be almost impossible to see in your photos. I could of course be quite wrong with my theory of bacteria as sometimes flocculent masses can occur through mutual attraction.
You could try staining your sample and see what, if any thing, shows up.
Peter.

[abrogard]

The tank is a modern plastic tank. Well sealed generally but with a flymeshed hole on top for the input water to come in. I guess mosquitoes could get through that mesh. I don't think there's any chance of frogs though.

I'll try staining and whatever I can.

How about drinking the stuff? Do you think that'd be alright? Hasn't killed us yet but I don't know how long it's been like this.

p.s. That's very interesting. I didn't know that. Bacteria can 'capture' nutrient sources ? In a gel of their own creation ?

[gekko]

You'll probably get better (more knowledgeable) answers, but I would boil the water before drinking it. Alternatively, I would add a few drops (I'm not sure how many) of bleach to a bottle of water and let it stand for a few hours before drinking it.

Added later:
http://water.epa.gov/drink/emerprep/eme ... ection.cfm
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... 2w&cad=rja
http://www.newjerusalem.com/PureWater.htm

[mrsonchus]

Hi, look definitely to contain 2 types of pollen and possibly scales from a moth's wing.... I'm probably wrong but that's how it looks to me. Welcome to the forum!

[Peter]

Hi Abrogard,
Don't get in a panic over bacteria in your drinking water it's a perfectly natural thing. If i am right and this "membrane" is bacterial (remember this is only my theory) then the bacteria are actually helping purify the water by breaking down and consuming the organic contaminants. Bacteria are all around and in us, every healthy human carrys in them 10 microbe cells for every one human cell of their bodies, without these one would become unhealthy very quickly.
Do you have a filter on your water reticulation system? Friends of mine live out of town and use rain water from their roof, the filter element is a dazzling white before it is used, some months later (when discarded) it is black. This filter takes care of all extraneous detritus including bacteria.
Bacteria get a bad rap, certainly there are bacteria that can make us very sick (or dead) these are very much in the minority most bacteria we can consume with impunity (I am definitely am not suggesting anyone go about looking for bacteria to eat, just do not become paranoid about some possible bacteria which may be about (that way madness lies)).

When I said "I suspect some bacteria has captured these" I did not mean that the bacteria actively or consciously ensnared food, just that some bacteria seem to live in a loose gel and if organic particles become stuck or embedded there in then they may be used as a nutrient sorse.
Hope this helps.
Peter.

[abrogard]

Hello Peter,

and hello to all those who posted and extended a welcome. Thank you.

Yes, I'm aware of the ubiquity of bacteria. To such an extent are they ubiquitous that I'm prepared to contemplate the suggestion that we are nothing more than an expression of bacteria's life force.

I'm aware that there's a calculation of the number of body cells in a human as being 40 trillion but the number of bacteria as being 10 times that.

If there's ten times as many bacteria as there are human cells it's not too much of a stretch to consider us as part of the bacteria rather than the bacteria as part of us, is it?

And that mass of bacteria apparently would weigh about the same as the brain. Makes you think.




I was wondering about the 'gel'. Some bacteria live in gel you say. So they must express that themselves. I can believe that. The expression of mucous is a very common thing for cells so I can believe bacteria would do it. In my current state of virtual total ignorance of cell and bacteria physiology I can't see why not.

So these membranes could be simply bacterial mucous with bacteria embedded and, incidentally, foreign matter?

I did take more photos yesterday and some of them may be better than those I currently have up on the web. When I can get that computer working (it's just frozen up, something wrong with the dvd burner) I'll go through them and see if there's anything that shows more clearly what might be content of that gel, that membrane.

I did think I saw something moving there for a while and I took a movie of it. I'll see how it turns out. It was just vague lumps moving beneath a 'blanket'. I hope it comes out.

Apart from that - which I couldn't repeat, my microscopy technique not being good enough - I failed to find any evidence of bacteria in the membrane, though I did find some 'fibres'.

[Rodney]

I would say boil your drinking water until determined otherwise. Baths may be ok like it is? I don`t always trust todays water unless it has been proven good to drink and tested a lot.

[abrogard]

Well I've uploaded yesterday's pics and the two videos to google photos. Same place:

https://plus.google.com/photos/11077559 ... 8TA3vmauwE

I tagged each pic in Picasa on my machine with the magnification I thought it had been taken at but Google photos has stripped all tags away. They really screwed up Picasa when they bought it.

Still, it's better than nothing I guess, and the price is right.

So there's two videos there. The first one is the best. Taken at 600x I think. So I suppose those moving things wouldn't be bacteria, too big, they'd be pond life of some sort.

Anyway, I couldn't get any other pics of them whatever they are.

The last three pics are close ups of the 'fibres' I found in the 'mat' that is the membrane.

So to date looks like the only suggestion I've got is a bacterial gel - from bacteria too small or too transparent for me to see with my microscopy techniques.

[75RR]

Hi abrogard,
do you have any photographs of the floating grey membranes on the water. Perhaps a little context would help.

[Peter]

Hi Abrogard,
After looking over your photos I think the main constituent of your "membrane" may be an aquatic fungus, several pictures appear to show crosslinked fibrous matter which is reminiscent of (if not necessarily indicative of) fungus mycelium.
In the videos I did see two or three spirillum, however these would have been taking advantage of the organic matter in the mass rather than being the cause of it. My expectation is that if you have proper filtration on your water system then this should be no problem to you.
What sort of quantity of this material is there in your tank? If it is just the odd spoon full lump then you might be able to scoop it out or ignore it, however if occupies the bulk of the tank it may affect the taste and quality of your water and would probably necessitate the emptying and scouring of your tank to rid yourself of it.
Peter.

[abrogard]

We have no filtration on the tank water. It is not piped into the house. There's a hose on it for watering and we fill a container from it and take it in the house for making drinks, cooking.

Used to. Don't use it now until this issue is resolved.

I have added a couple of pics to the google photos thing. They are of shallow bowls of water showing the 'membranes' floating in there. They don't float on the top like a scum or film, they float within the liquid.

There seems to be fewer today than when I first noticed.

You can see from the pics there's no questions of 'spoonful lump' - it doesn't come like that.

When I'm trying to get a specimen for a slide they break up fairly easily into smaller parts and they don't seem to be sticky - they flow around the spoon or slide or whatever I'm using to try to get them with, moved by whatever faint currents are in the water.

Yet when I have one hooked onto a slide - generally caught on the end somewhere - they have enough cohesion to enable me to push it around on the slide with a cover slip to attempt to get it into a better place for viewing.

The mycelium thing sounds good except wouldn't you then expect a uniform tangled mat all over? Whereas I found very little as you can see from the pics.

[Peter]

Hi Abrogard,
Aquatic fungus is very primitive and tends to come more as single threads. I would strongly recommend you set up a proper filtration and reticulation system as soon as possible, it will cost but the safety factor and the convenience will be more than worth it. A proper diagnosis is all but impossible over the web, I would suggest you take a sample to some local authority and/or university to get some expert help. My guess is that a "cure" is going to require emptying and scouring your tank.
Peter.

[abrogard]

I am trying to get help from S.A. Water but haven't got past the mandatory front desk blockhead yet.

And of course nowadays it'd be impossible to get a phone line direct to real people in a lab.

Thanks for your interest.

I'm going to try setting up for some different illumination. Maybe phase contrast. I have some polarising filters I got for just that job. It'll be a first for me. It may reveal something my current setup doesn't reveal.



p.s. I can't see we need any reticulation. When we used the water in the house for coffee and cooking about four trips to the tank a day with our insulated water bottle thing was enough. And the exercise is a plus nowadays, isn't it?

But filtration. What sort of filtration? I took a quick look at Bunnings yesterday and there didn't appear to be anything.

[Peter]

Hi Abrogard,
Sorry but I have had no direct dealings with tank water filtration so can not advise on this, my best advise is to look for a local supplier of pumps etc. for people who use tank water (as those on farms etc.).
Peter.

[abrogard]

Yep, I went to the wrong place. Daish irrigation would be the right place to go. I'll check them out today. Hoping to get some sense out of SA Water today regarding potentially harmful possible contaminants of this nature. Hoping.