The global demand for food protein must be balanced with
increased concern for the environmental impact caused by these
production systems. Land-based closed-containment aquaculture
using recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) are uniquely poised
to produce highly desirable and valuable food products while also
maintaining a small environmental footprint. However, while most
RAS are designed to remove solids and recycle water back to the fish
culture tanks (Summerfelt and Vinci, 2008; Timmons and Ebeling,
2010), the inability of these systems to remove nitrate–nitrogen
from the water significantly arrests this industry’s ultimate economic
and environmental sustainability