Natural assemblages of marine bacteria were chosen in a batch culture experiments. The impact of varying nitrogen substrate concentrations and the substrate C:N ratios (C:NS) on the bacterial C:N ratio (C:NB), the bacterial growth effciency (BGE) and ammonium regeneration was mainly examined. The C:NS ratios varied from 5:1 (carbon limitation) to 40:1 (nitrogen limitation) with varying combinations of glucose and NO3- . The C:NB ratio had positive relationship with the C:NS ratio (r=0.93, n=8), whose value was 3.77 when the C:NS ratio was 5:1 but increased to 6.47 when the C:NS ratio was 40:1. These results indicate that the C:NB ratio is a potential diagnostic tool for determining the bacterial growth in natural waters controlled by either, carbon or nitrogen. BGE decreased with the declining nitrate concentration and negatively related to C:Ns (r=-0.51, n=8). The average value of BGE was 0.20. This value was a little lower than other reports, which could be induced by the nitrogen source used in our experiments. Finally, regeneration time of ammonium delayed with the increasing C:NS ratio, which indicates that there were different metabolism mechanisms when bacterial growth was limited by carbon source and nitrogen source.
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