The assimilation of nitrogen and phosphorus into algal and bacterial biomass is seen as advantageous due to the recycling potential of the nutrients via biomass treatment. Unicellular microalgae are found to be the most efficient and most pre­dominant in wastewater treatment ponds (Pittman et al., 2011). The use of combined algae-bacteria cultures increases the nitrogen accumulation efficiency; for exam­ple, in the treatment of acetonitrile, 53% ammonia was assimilated into biomass as compared to only 26% in a bacterial system under the same conditions. Under optimal conditions, 100% removal can be achieved (Su et al., 2011). The increased removal efficiency of nutrients may be attributed to the algal requirement of high amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus for the production of proteins, nucleic acids, and phospholipids, which account for 45% to 60% of the algal dry weight (Munoz and Guieysse, 2006). Su et al. (2011) demonstrated COD, ammonia, and phosphate removal efficiencies of up to 98%, 100%, and 72.6%, respectively, for the treatment of municipal wastewater. Nutrient removal efficiencies depend on the cultural con­ditions as mentioned previously and the nutrient loading rate. Boelee et al. (2011) showed a linear increase in nitrate and phosphate uptake with increasing loading rate up to 1.0 g m-2d-1 and 0.13 g m-2d-1, respectively, from municipal wastewater. Wang et al. (2011) showed an ammonia removal rate of 90%, irrespective of the initial con­centration used. Furthermore, total nitrogen and phosphorus was found to be greatly reduced from piggery wastewater. Nutrient removal efficiencies ranging from 91% to 96% ammonia and 72% to 87% phosphate, depending on the season and depth of the culture, were observed by Olguin (2003).