Wastewater with high NH4+-N is difficult to treat by traditional methods. So in this paper, a wild strain of photosynthetic bacteria was used for high NH4+-N wastewater treatment together with biomass recovery. Isolation, identification, and characterization of the microorganism were carried out. The strain was inoculated to the biological wastewater treatment unit. The impacts of important factors were examined, including temperature, dissolved oxygen, and light intensity. Results showed that photosynthetic bacteria could effectively treat high NH4+N wastewater. For wastewater with NH4+-N of 2300 mg.L-1, COD/N=1.0, 98.3% of COD was removed, and cell concentration increased by 43 times. The optimal conditions for the strain's cell growth and wastewater treatment were 30 degrees C, dissolved oxygen of 0.5-1.5 mg.L-1 and a light intensity of 4000 lx. Photosynthetic bacteria could bear a lower C/N ratio than bacteria in a traditional wastewater treatment process, but the NH4+-N removal was only 20%-40% because small molecule carbon source was used prior to NH4+-N. Also, the use of photosynthetic bacteria in chickenmanure wastewater containing NH4+-N about 7000 mg.L-1 proved that photosynthetic bacteria could remove NH4+-N in a real case, finally, 83.2% of NH4+-N was removed and 66.3% of COD was removed. (C) 2015 The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, and Chemical Industry Press. All rights reserved.