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I haven't actually filtered a sample for phyto, no. It probably is worth doing, but I suspect I'd have to process a fairly large sample because of how thinly distributed it would have to be. I don't have any screens or filter bags of a fine enough grade to do that at the moment, and probably won't be able to get any quickly.... My main reasons for believing that this isn't algal, however, are: 1) no associated turbidity - as you'd know from greenwater cultures, phyto makes water look murky fast. 2) the system has very heavy foam fractionation compared to a typical home system, and fractionation is generally pretty good at stripping phyto cells - I do monitor the effluent quality and it doesn't show signs of much phyto presence (but may put someunder a microscope tomorrow to confirm). And 3) the system has a pretty high turnover through ~40mJ/cm^2 of UV, which ought definitely inhibit a bloom of this size taking hold this quickly.
I did run today a transmittance/absorbance test in 1nm increments from 340nm to 900nm. The results were... interesting, but not particularly useful.
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