Remote Wi-Fi Monitoring of Your Setup

I have a rodent eating through the plastic on my auto feeder.  This plastic was the extension I attached and not a manufacturers accessory.  The caused a hole that forced an overfeed and a minor foiled water situation.  In order to get an appropriate trap I used the opportunity to configure a FOSCAM Fi8910W wireless camera I had. After seeing a small rat last night, I set some appropriate traps around the feeder and also covered the feed extension with a $5 aluminum vent pipe.

The system works well.  I am running 802.11b/g about 20m from my access point inside the house. Once I get the rodent taken care of, I will configure the angle of the camera so that I can view the condition of the fish tank water.  This way I can see if it is getting fouled.

The setup currently allows me to control (360 degree motion and up/down) the camera, record, and view from my desktop as well as simultaneously from a smartphone.  Setup was a breeze.  I recommend viewing the following for instruction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xKu4uZtt3M

I use an Android, and the apps I use for viewing and controlling the camera are "IP Cam Remote" (free) and "IP Cam Viewer Basic" (free).

Using this instruction, you can view and control the camera from outside your local area network.  That is while travelling and through the internet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHTxuYa3Kzo

View of feeder through my phone and IP Cam Remote.

The FOSCAM camera is here:

See Part 2 of this blog entry here, remote-wi-fi-monitoring-part-2

Aquaponics Failsafe Design

Failures happen.  It's part of life. Failsafes in your aqauponics setup are design considerations to provide safety and some level of protection (assets, fish, your own life) should things go wrong.  I will discuss a few precautions and their logic here.

Firstly, and most important is for the electrical feed in your setup.  This must be protected with a GFI plug.  You are dealing with water, many electrical appliances, and mains level electricity.  Either your feed should be from a GFI protected plug (shown), breaker, or extension.  The GFI will trip the electrical circuit should a   current be detected on the ground line (the start of a fault).

Secondly, should have an overall water circulation failure plan.  You can have the following failures, and I have listed my safety mechanisms:
1. grow bed drain failure (clogging) // overflow mechanism
2. sludge separator outflow failure (clogging) // overflow mechanism
3. water loss (either 1,2 above or pipe failure) // minimum water level in fish grow tanks
4. water in greenhouse // drain capability


My safety mechanisms are implemented as follows.

The overflow mechanism on the grow beds are either a drain to an adjacent grow bed, and/or an overflow directly back into the grow bed.

 bed to bed overflow allowance

over flow pipe on my sludge separator (the unconnected pipe on the left -- it is normally connected with a hose directly back to the fish tanks

 green overflow pipe directly to fish tank

The minimum water level in the fish tanks are provided by having the pump not be able to pump the tank dry.   My pumps are set to draw air at about a 6 inches (15cm) of water.  You do this by raising the pump at the bottom of the tank or situating it so it's input will hit air at your desired depth. This is important so that if you do get a pipe failure, your pump will not eventually empty your tank and kill your fish.

When you build your greenhouse or aquaponics enclosure, keep in mind you are dealing with water.  There will be times you want to empty your tank, have accidental spills, have accidental overfills, and other reasons why you will have water on the floor. Don't worry.  And don't make your walls waterproof sealed at the seam to the floor -- this will allow the water to escape.  If you did caulk or otherwise seal your wall seams, open a few water channels around the perimeter.

Third you need to have protection for overfeeding.  I have had the most trouble with inconsistent feeding.  This could be for a number of reasons and I have not determined the root cause.  The solution for this is to feed minimal amounts with your auto feeder.  I then manually top the feeding so that I can control it. What does this mean?  If I am travelling, I set my auto feeder to only feed once a day (in the afternoon).  I then feed the fish myself up to two more times during the day (morning and evening).  The fish survive fine with the single feeding.

Fourth, you need to have precautions on your air hoses.  This is to prevent water back pressure from returning along the air feeder lines and flooding your air pumps.  The precautions taken here are two.  First, and ideally you place the air pumps above the water level in your fish tanks.  Sometimes this is not possible.  If not, then the two methods applicable are to use one way air valves on the lines (of limited usefulness but part of the strategy), and a looping of the line (here you can also take the line first above the water level, but due to vacuum affects this alone will not prevent back feed). Even using these precautions note that a power failure in my home one day caused water backup into one air pump that caused a leak and, fortunately, triggered my GFI extension -- otherwise I would have stepped into a puddle of live power when trying to find out where the water was coming from.

In the future I want to connect the feeder, pump and a camera of my setup to the internet.  This will allow me full control while travelling.

Starting Seeds in Aquaponics Beds

Starting seeds for your aquaponics grow beds depends on the substrate you are using.  See this entry for options.  If you use vermiculite on the upper layer, you can just spread small seed on the surface and cover with a thin layer of more vermiculite.  Larger seeds can just be embedded in the vermiculite.  If you are using Hydroton, you can also embed larger seeds like beans just under the top layer.

For small seeds in Hydroton, or for more controlled planting in any media I prefer to use coconut husk pots with a vermiculite media.  I can germinate the seed either indoors or in the greenhouse, and then put the entire pot into the grow bed when ready.  This can be used in any media grow bed, including Hydroton.

The benefit of this technique is that you are not introducing organisms into your ecosystem that may be present in regular soil, you have control over the planting, and you can germinate the seed in optimum conditions for the appropriate seed.

Internet of Things Alarm for Fouled Water in Aquaponics

My post, greenhouse-sensor-reading, noted an experiment to use the Sensor Egg to detect elevated levels of Nitrite/Nitrate in my aquaponics tank which are deadly to fish.  I am happy and sad to note that the experiment shows that this thesis seems valid.
The theory here is that elevated levels of these chemicals in the water may trigger the N02 sensor in the egg and show a reading which can be used as an alarm.
What I found in two occasions was that an imbalance caused by overfeeding caused fowling of the water and triggered elevated readings in the Egg.  If you look at 1-15-2013 and 1-27-2013, https://cosm.com/feeds/96569, you will see elevations.  The second elevation occurred while I was travelling on business, and due to the length of time before I checked on the tank, it resulted in fishkill which caused a loss of about 50lbs of fish.
While I am not sure of the accuracy of the NO2 calibration of the sensor unit, it is sufficient to use the relative value as a trigger.  I have the cosm feed set to tweet me should the value rise above 250PPB.
If you are setting up a new tank, then the Nitrates/Nitrites will be elevated while you are "starting" the tank.  Use this to set your high point on the sensor readings.  When your tank settles -- that should give the normal "safe" reading level.

Automated IOT Greenhouse Sensor Reading

I am using an AirQualityEgg unit in my greenhouse to monitor temperature and humidity.  It also provides readings of CO and NO2.  I will setup another NO2 sensor closer to the water -- then see if there is a correlation between water nitrates and NO2 readings on the sensor.

You can get sensors from here, http://www.wickeddevice.com/

You can see my readings here, https://cosm.com/feeds/96569

You can get more info here, http://airqualityegg.com

Disclaimer: the sensors are not temperature corrected so you will see relative humidity go over 100%. Also, the readings at cosm include the raw sensor readings as well as the calculated information (not my doing - this is provided as part of the airqualityeggs).

Food for Tilapia

There are several options for feeding your tilapia depending on the size of your operation and the format of your grow environment.  This entry will focus on systems that have the fish in enclosed tanks.  This is as would be found in a city backyard system.  For reference, the use of large outdoor ponds is a different system that has other options.

General feeding issues.
You want to feed your fish for maximum growth and least waste.
Your fish can go with less food or no food for a couple days.
It is better to underfeed than overfeed when you will be away from your setup.  Overfeeding will lead to water fouling and fish kill.
Feeding your fish too much will result in undigested food travelling through their system, and inefficiency.

Starting:
If you are just starting; you have "started" your tanks and you are awaiting the delivery of your fingerlings; these are good places to get food:
http://premiumfishfood.com/
http://jimsfish.webs.com/fishfood.htm

Once you are going, you can experiment with different foods.  You can grow your own algae, make your own food or even use kitchen scraps.  Be slow in scraps you put into your tank to ensure you don't foul the water (eg. oily muffins are bad, bread can be good if used in moderation, raw vegetables can be good).  I found tofu to be a welcome food by the fish.

Ongoing and Recipe for your own food:
Purchased bulk food:
A good, reasonably priced food for your grow tanks is Purina Game Chow.  This is available locally at Tractor Supply Company.  It is variably sized and works well with both my auto feeders.

Tofu:
Tofu can easily be made at home. The most difficult part is making soy milk, but you can do this easily now with "soy milk cookers".
An example of a good maker is here,
SoyJoy Soymilk maker
Once you have made soymilk, you add a coagulant (calcium sulfite, or magnesium chloride) put in a press to remove excess water.  You can get food grade ingredients from http://www.soymilkmaker.com/order.html

Further instructions are here,
http://www.soymilkmaker.com/making_tofu.html

Cream of Wheat Cakes:
While I was investigating making my own tofu, and pondering the coagulants used in that process, I began experimenting with alternate recipes.  What I settled on and use regularly is the following. It came from the thought of making tofu, but instead uses other readily available ingredients.
1 cup instant Cream of Wheat
1 cup of medium burr ground soy beans
1/2 cup of ground corn meal
1/2 cup of finely cut dry seaweed
Begin making the instant cream of wheat per the package instructions.  Immediately after pouring in the cream of wheat, also add the ground soy beans, corn meal and dry seaweed.  Continuously stir so it remains smooth and does not burn.  Once the mixture begins to thicken turn off heat and cool for about 10 minutes (until still able to pour, or scoop).  I scoop the mixture into used tofu tubs with a spatula, pressing as I go, and then allow to further cool.  Cover with plastic wrap and place in refrigerator.  To use, cut rows and columns into block so that you can remove a square column and feed to tilapia.

Automatic feeding:
I use two types of auto feeders.  I use smaller units for my 55gal and 110gal tanks, and a larger unit for my 300gal outdoor setup.  Both feeders dispense 2-3.5mm circular pellet food (the Purina Fish Chow).

For my indoor tanks I use an Eheim Air Feeder.  These provide about a week of capacity and are reliable. I have a complete review here,
Amazon Review
Purchase from Amazon

For my outdoor grow out tank I use a Super-Feeder ASF-1 unit. I have modified my unit with an extra carrier to hold a little more than 1 week of food.
Super-Feeder Fish Feeder

Reference:
http://seagrant.uconn.edu/whatwedo/aquaculture/pdf/ncrac114_tilapia.pdf
Aquaponic Gardening by Sylvia Bernstein

Aquaponics:fouling water and other problems

Problems to be encountered in Aquaponics systems:
* predators: raccoons, opossums, they will eat your fish or destroy your grow beds looking for snails
    --> mechanically protect: cover fish tanks, enclose system
    --> simple styrofoam has shielded my system from these predators, though they did cut through my plastic door before I put foam on it also

* sludge fouling your piping and grow beds
    --> use a sludge separator: http://wolfenhawke.blogspot.com/2012/09/aquaponics-sludge-separator-update.html

* water fouled: this could be for any number of reasons, but most likely it will occur from overfeeding.  This can happen accidently due variations in an auto feeder
    --> turn off all feeding until water clears, don't worry, your fish can survive days without food
    --> if you see excess floating food, remove it
    --> if possible replace at least half of your water, but don't fret it if you cannot replace
    --> if you are using a timer on your water pump, bypass it so it is running 24/7
    --> run the system continuously until the water clears -- it will, then restart normal operation

* mysterious fishkill:  your fish are dying but the water is not cloudy
    --> this is rare for tilapia farming
    --> check your chemical levels
    --> check for dead fish fouling the water
    --> check the tank temperature -- sometimes heater elements will fail on
    --> check for water getting too cold -- temps lower than 55F are bad for Tilapia
    --> proceed similar to water fouled actions above: but on chemical imbalance, you will also need to investigate -- this could happen if you didn't "start the fish tank" and you put a lot of fish in at once, see http://wolfenhawke.blogspot.com/2012/10/starting-fish-tanks.html