Recent discoveries regarding the regulation of the biofilm life cycle by bacterial signaling systems have identified novel strategies for manipulation of biofilm development to control the biofouling of membrane-based water purification systems. Nitric oxide (NO) signaling has been shown to induce dispersal of a wide range of single- and multi-species biofilms. However, the impact of NO-mediated biofilm dispersal on the taxa composition of natural communities as well as the potential selection for non-responding community members have rarely been addressed. Here, we investigated the effect of diethylenetriamine (DETA) NONOate, an NO donor with a long half-life, on biofilm dispersal of a bacterial community responsible for membrane biofouling to address this question. The biofilm of a complex community from a fouled industrial reverse osmosis (RO) membrane was dispersed over 50% by 500 µM of DETA NONOate treatment in a continuous flow system. Once-daily treatment with DETA NONOate in a laboratory-scale RO system demonstrated its anti-biofouling effect by delaying the transmembrane pressure increase during constant-flux filtration. Characterization of the bacterial communities of dispersed cells and remaining biofilm cells using a 16S Illumina MiSeq metabarcoding approach demonstrated that biofilm dispersal by DETA NONOate had no selection bias in the community.