Microbial Mat?

[Bryan]

I collected this sample from our swimming pool. It's a film or microbial mat that seems to just be growing on certain surfaces like around the edges where the intake and jets are mounted. Maybe it likes the gasket material. The chemistry in the pool is good, we just had it checked, so it's not a cesspool of microbial activity. With all the chemistry in there it may be a harsh environment to support life, but there it is. To my untrained eye the mat doesn't look like an algae. I'm thinking maybe a bacterial mat? I'm just curious if anyone has any idea what this mat could be.

This image is from a stereo microscope at 20X magnification. You can see the texture of the mat. What you see in this image is about 2cm long.

Pool film.jpg (90.07 KiB) Viewed 799 times

This video is from my compound microscope at 450 magnification. You can see the organisms that look like they are feeding on the fringe of the mat. Could those be ciliates?
Com[youtube]https://youtu.be/HJyH21F2lrg[/youtube]

[Bryan]

This is an interesting article on the stresses that may be causing the striped pattern in my sample. The pool is a harsh environment with flowing water.

https://engineering.princeton.edu/news ... g-patterns