Fish farm management and microcontroller based aeration control system

Abstract

Fisheries are required to grant convenient environmental conditions for fish growth with minimum cost afford.  Providing these environmental conditions should essentially correlate fish type, pond dimensions, water properties, and weather conditions to the fish growth rate, feeding and metabolism.  The large uncertainty margin of such parameters relations and effects drives the farmers to have economically inefficient practices in their farms.  The present work was divided into two parts.  The first part introduced an interactive Microsoft Excel spreadsheets as a decision support system (DSS) for the purposes of fish farm area planning according to the different required purposes of ponds, water evaluation to insure the most suitable environment of fish growth, and mechanical aeration management.  The design of this DSS took the simplicity of required input data and data output into consideration.  The second part was a microcontroller based open loop control system for mechanical aeration process based on the calculations of the DSS.  The aeration management part input and output data fed to the control system with a specially developed program using µC-language.  This program performs the calculations of aeration requirements and energy demands based on the DSS calculations.  Furthermore, the controller had the feature of working from isolated power supply or in collaboration with renewable energy system.  These utilities have been created to be suitable for three fish types, which are Mullet, Tilapia, and Carp fish.  These types have a wide acceptance in the aquaculture activities under warm water conditions.  The data obtained from the calculations of the spreadsheet under simulated and real field conditions were compared to a reference data. The spreadsheet showed an agreement with the reference values.  The control systems succeed to operate 1hp-3phase induction motor for a time that was identical to the required aeration time calculated through the DSS.  It was recommended to rely on the created DSS and the control system for farm area planning, water environment evaluation, and mechanical aeration management and operation.  In addition, improvements for the control system should be carried out to be a real-time system especially with water quality parameters considering system power requirements and operating costs.

Keywords: control system, fish farm, management, microcontroller, aeration