Settlement ponds are used to remove particulate and dissolved nutrients in Australian
land-based aquaculture wastewater. At best, marine and brackish water settlement ponds
reduce total suspended solids by 60%, but their efficiency is inconsistent. Functional improvements
to nutrient removal systems are essential to provide uniform and predictable treatment of
flow-through aquaculture wastewater. Furthermore, environmental regulation of discharge from
intensive systems in Australia is increasing, providing the impetus to upgrade rudimentary singlestep
settlement pond systems. We characterise technologies used for land-based aquaculture
wastewater treatment prior to discharge from shrimp systems in Australia. We identify opportunities
to integrate technologies developed for the treatment of municipal wastewaters and intensive
recirculating aquaculture systems, and use these to develop a model system for intensive shrimp
farm wastewater. The first stage is the reduction of solids through the use of deep anaerobic
ponds, which are tailored to dilute saline wastewater. Non-settled colloidal and supracolloidal
solids can subsequently be removed through trapping in a sand bed filter and biological transformation
to dissolved inorganic nitrogen or N2. The resulting dissolved nutrients can be treated in a
3-stage algal treatment system by assimilation into harvestable biomass, and finally constructed
wetlands polish wastewater through further trapping of particulates, and transformation of dissolved
nitrogen. Given that upgrading wastewater treatment facilities is costly, we highlight
options that have the potential to offset nutrient treatment costs, such as the use of algal biomass
for food or energy products, and the recycling of nitrogen and phosphorus via pyrolysis creating
products such as biochar and biofuel.