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Automated Aquaculture System That Regulates PH, Temperature and Ammonia
Automated Aquaculture System That Regulates PH, Temperature and Ammonia
Automated Aquaculture System That Regulates PH, Temperature and Ammonia
Abstract— The current method of raising tilapia in the possibility of fish kill. The system takes advantage of
Philippines is through fish ponds exposed to the weather. electronic sensors to provide real-time parameter
Methods for measuring pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, and measurements, a controller to process, store the data, and
ammonia are limited to manually using a chemical test kit. The automatically take corrective action when needed, perform the
current system relies on manually regulating the water quality so said corrective action while notifying the user through SMS.
the fish are at risk of harmful situations resulting from unsafe Elements found in previous studies and recommendations were
levels of temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, or ammonia. This integrated to design this system.
study aims to solve that problem by creating a system that
automatically measures and regulates the pH, temperature,
dissolved oxygen, and ammonia. This study takes advantage of II. LITERATURE REVIEW
electronic sensors for pH, temperature, and dissolved oxygen, The National Aquaculture Sector of the Philippines
while computing the ammonia factor, to allow the user to observed the typical method of raising tilapia in the
measure the levels of the said parameters at any given time,
Philippines involves placing the tilapia in large outdoor ponds,
process, send the data to a LabVIEW database, and use the data
to automatically take corrective action against harmful levels of pens, and cages. These containers are usually placed in
pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, and ammonia while notifying freshwater lakes or man-made ponds. The tilapia are fed and
the user through SMS. The proponents of this study built the sampled or transferred when necessary. It is usually an
prototype and tested it on two different trials of 50 fingerlings affordable and basic set up [3].
each in a 1 cubic-meter glass aquarium.
The Metropolitan Fishing Group based in Singapore uses
Keywords— Tilapia farming, pH, Temperature, Control Dissolved Oxygen (DO) sensors to monitor the DO levels of
Actuators , Ammonia
their fish tanks. When the sensors detect critically-low levels
of DO, their system immediately notifies the staff to manually
I. INTRODUCTION replenish the DO through operating a special pump. Their
tanks also use electronic filters to ensure optimal water quality
for their fish. [4]. It is recommended that future studies utilize
Tilapia farming is a very large industry in the Philippines.
The Philippines produced 260,525.67 metric tons of tilapia in a database to record data trends, and a GSM module to notify
2012 [1]. Fish farms are all over the country usually raise the the user remotely [5].
fish in containers fresh-water lakes or large man-made ponds;
the majority with a common depth of 70-80 cm [2]. The In the area of real-time pH measurement, a research group
current system leaves the fish outdoors and exposed to explored the use of Ion Selective Electrodes (ISE)in
elements. The fish are vulnerable to situations where the pH, measuring ammonia and the pH levels of a solution. They
temperature, DO, or ammonia levels become harmful. It only fabricated their own ISE’s by combining a disposable
takes one of those parameters to be at a lethal level for entire potentiometric creatinine with a disposable solid-state
batches of fish to die off and cause major losses for the whole reference electrode. According to the data, the ISE had a very
growing cycle. This requires constant vigilance which can be quick response time of about less than 30 seconds and
cumbersome for the staff. exhibited good operational stability [6].
This study intended to provide a solution for such events.
The system proposed is meant to provide a means to provide In the area of raising tilapia fingerlings, a research group
real-time measurements and regulation for pH, temperature, tested the effect of stocking density on growth of male tilapia
DO, and ammonia. The system was designed to measure and fingerlings. The proponents used five different stocking
automatically take corrective action as soon as harmful levels densities: 0.125, 1, 4, 12, and 20 fingerlings/m2 in 32 m2
of any of the said parameters are detected to reduce the concrete ponds with a depth of 90 cm. Their growing period
A. Arduino Programming
Arduino was the software used for programming the
Arduino microcontrollers [12]. Each microcontroller
continuously repeats a programmed cycle where each assigned
parameter is measured, compared against the set-point, and
then dealt the corresponding corrective action if needed [13].
Every hour, the system updates the user of the current level of Fig. 4. Temperature and pH flowchart
each parameter through SMS. The figure below shows the
overall cycle of the controllers.
V. METHODOLOGY
There were two trials of using the prototype to raise 50
tilapia fingerlings each. The growing periods for both trials
lasted 28 days. Prior to the start of the growing period, three
(3) samples of 10 fingerlings each were weighed to record the
initial weight of each fingerling. The same process was done
at the end of each trial to determine the final weight.
During the trial period, the fish were fed twice a day. Once Fig. 6. pH vs. temperature correlation graph
at 8am and once at 4pm. Dead fish were immediately removed
from the aquarium to reduce any additional ammonia. The
prototype didn’t require frequent maintenance but required the
filter to be changed at least once per trial.
When administering feeds for the fish, it was important to Weight Weight Gain Rate/day
note if there were any effects on any of the parameters. So the
proponents administered 1 gram of feeds to a water container Reference 1.09 g 25.09 g 24 g 0.8571 g
and measured the parameters every 20 minutes for 1 hour. The
table below show the results. Trial 1 2g 11.1667 g 9.1667 g 0.2957 g