All previously reported bacterial species which are capable of lysing harmful algae have been isolated from coastal environments in which harmful algae blooms have occurred. Due to the low concentration of alga-lysing bacteria in an algal bloom, it is difficult to isolate the alga-lysing bacteria by existing methods. In this paper, two algae-lysing bacterial strains,P01 and P03, have been isolated from a biosystem immobilized on a sponge that was highly effective in removing algae and microcystins. Their lysing modes and effects on Microcystis aeruginosa have been studied. The results show that the degradation processes of these two strains for M. aeruginosa accorded with a first-order reaction model when the chlorophylla concentration was in the range from 0 to 1000 μg L-1. The degradation rate constants were 0.106 7, 0.127 4 and 0.279 2 for P01and0.0683, 0.0744 and 0.02897 for P03, when the bacterial densities were 8.6 × 105, 8.6 × 106 and 8.6 × 107cells mL 1, respectively. Moreover, the two bacterial strains had favourable lytic effects not only on M. aeruginosa, but also on Chlorella and Scene-desmus. Their lytic effect on M. aeruginosa did not require physical cell to cell contact, but proceeded by the production of an extracellular product. The bacterial strains were identified as Bacillus species by PCR amplification of the 16S rRNA gene, BLAST analysis, and comparison with sequences in the GenBank nucleotide database.