The Sippewisset salt marshes by Woods Hole, Massachusetts are home to a persistent millimeter-sized granular biofilm, nicknamed “pink berries” due to their distinctive color and size. These berries uniquely have a very stable species composition over time, while most wild microbiota tend to be stable in niche, but not in species. This makes it desirable to harness as a model system to study symbiotic biofilms in the wild. Two uncultivated species, a purple sulfur bacterium (PSB1) and a sulfate oxidizing bacterium (SRB1) make up the majority of the berry’s biomass. While attempting to isolate PSB1 by method of deep agar tubes, we repeatedly purified a strain of Thiorhodococcus drewsii, which had been previously isolated in marsh sediment. This brings up further questions of whether this is a common contaminant or possibly a migratory constituent of the berry. Additionally, using genus-level relatives of PSB1, we developed methods for obtaining a growth curve of clumpy PSBs. This provided unique challenges, since the clumpiness of the cells renders traditional OD measurements inconsistent. Homogenization of the culture through orbital shaking proved ineffective. Further work must be done to obtain consistent measurements or find a different proxy for growth. We hope to complete the isolation and growth curve methods in tandem so that we may begin to study PSB1 as soon as it is isolated.