The effects of certain ecological factors on the growth of Tetraselmis sp. in laboratory

Abstract

The green alga, Tetraselmis sp., contain relatively large amounts of valuable lipids and are commonly used as food source for commercial application in aquaculture. In this study we evaluated the effect of certain ecological factors such as light intensity, temperature, salinity, initial density, phosphate and nitrogen concentration on the growth of Tetraselmis sp. which continuously grew under laboratory-controlled conditions, aimed to apply these results for mass-culture of Tetraselmis sp. in aquaculture hatcheries. Tetraselmis sp. tolerates to a broad range of salinity and prefers high salinity at 35-45 ppt. The best suitable initial density for algal growth was about 15-20 x 104 cells/ml. The best temperature for the Tetraselmis sp. growth was 28oC. The suitable fluorescent light intensities were from 150-200mol s-1m-2. In F/2 (Guillard 1975) medium, the critical range of N concentration for growth of the algae was from 7.36 – 22.36 mg/l, the optimum phosphate concentration for growth were from 0.77 –3.27 mg/l.