Objective Marine actinomycetes from the genus Salinispora have an unexploited biotechnological potential. To accurately estimate their application potential however, data on their cultivation, including biomass growth kinetics, are needed but only incomplete information is currently available. Results This work provides some insight into the effect of temperature, salinity, nitrogen source, glucose concentration and oxygen supply on growth rate, biomass productivity and yield of Salinispora tropica CBN-440(T). The experiments were carried out in unbaffled shake flasks and agitated laboratory-scale bioreactors. The results show that the optimum growth temperature lies within the range 28-30 degrees C, salinity is close to sea water and the initial glucose concentration is around 10 g/L. Among tested nitrogen sources, yeast extract and soy peptone proved to be the most suitable. The change from unbaffled to baffled flasks increased the volumetric oxygen transfer coefficient (k(L)a) as did the use of agitated bioreactors. The highest specific growth rate (0.0986 h(-1)) and biomass productivity (1.11 g/L/day) were obtained at k(L)a = 28.3 h(-1). A further increase in k(L)a was achieved by increasing stirrer speed, but this led to a deterioration in kinetic parameters. Conclusions Improvement of S. tropica biomass growth kinetics of was achieved mainly by identifying the most suitable nitrogen sources and optimizing k(L)a in baffled flasks and agitated bioreactors.