Effects of different media in production of marine microalgae Chlorella spp. using commercial agriculture fertilizers

Abstract

Algae play an important role as primary feed in aquatic ecosystems and as food for zoo­planktons which are also important for the aquatic animals husbandry in larval stages. Thus, their production at the industrial scale is important. The marine microalgae Chlorella sp. was cultured under small-scale, batch culture condition, to evaluate the differences in growth rates (biomass production): using commercial agriculture fertilizers and analytical grade of inorganic salts for 20 days. Five different culture media were formulated as treatments including different concentration (%) of Cooper hydroponic culture media (T100%, T75%, T50% and T25%) and a control group, i.e. F/2 medium (T0) which is commonly used for microalgae cultivation in commercial aquaculture without Cooper media. Chlorella sp. exhibited better results in T25% during different experimental time interval. Results also revealed that T25% is highly cost-effective as well, since it was almost 94% (sixteen times) cheaper than F/2 medium. The results suggest that commercial agricultural fertilizers could be added to the marine microalgae culture medium for providing the analytical grade nutrients with no significant side effect on the medium.

Keywords

• chlorella sp
• algae medium
• commercial agricultural salts
• biomass production