Performance Enhancement, Bacterial Communities Optimization and Emerging Pollutants Elimination by Microalgal-Bacterial Consortium for Treating Aquaculture Pond Sediments

Abstract

Aquaculture pond sediments have a notable influence on the ecosystem balance and farmed animal health. Microalgal-bacterial immobilization (MBI) was designed to improve aquaculture pond sediments via cooperative interactions in this study. The physicochemical characteristics, bacterial communities, and the emerging pollutants removal efficiencies were systematically investigated. The consortium containing diatom Navicula seminulum and Alcaligenes faecalis was cultivated and established in the free and immobilized forms for evaluating the treatment performance. The results demonstrated that the immobilized group could perform better in controlling nutrient pollutants, shaping and optimizing the bacterial community compositions with the enrichment of functional bacteria, as well as exhibiting stronger positive correlation between the bacterial community shifts with nutrient pollutants removal compared with free cells. Moreover, the immobilized system maintained the higher emerging pollutants (heavy metals, antibiotics, and pathogenic Vibrios) removal performance than free group. These findings confirmed that the employment of immobilized N. seminulum and A. faecalis produced more synergistic benefits and exerted more improvements than free cells in ameliorating aquaculture pond sediments, suggesting the potential for engineering application of functional microalgal-bacterial consortium in aquaculture.

Keywords: Aquaculture pond sediments, Microalgal-bacterial immobilization (MBI), Cooperative interactions, Bacterial community compositions, Emerging pollutants removal