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/diy/ - Do It Yourself

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1135408 No.1135408 [Reply] [Original]

Hi fellas,

Im looking for a backupsystem if the airpump in my aquaponic greenhouse dies.
I dont want to fiddle with a dissolved oxygene probe. I'd rather go in the direction check if pressure on the airtube or check if device is pulling current.
Thoughts?

>> No.1135447

>>1135408
install a second airpump

>> No.1135468

>>1135447
If i i used an identical airpump i d be wasting energy by aerating more then necessary.
If i used a weaker pump it couldnt compensate the fail of the main pump.

>> No.1135482

You should be checking your aquaponic system daily. You'll find out soon enough if a air pump is out.

Alternatively, if you don't check it every day then at least check it every other day or so. The fish will be find for a short stint of time. If you're not checking you system for a longer period of time than that then sell all your shit because you can't manage one properly.

>> No.1135619

>>1135482
First off i strongly reject your implication im not up to the task as i do this for years without fish casualties other than the occasional mobbing victim.

Matter of fact i consider it irresponsible not to build in a failswitch for aeration as most people on a certain level do so for good reasons.
In summer my greenhouse reaches 50+ degrees celsius if it wasnt for my climatisation. I will still have at least 25 degrees celsius in the water. So a day without aerating could bring the oxygen levels down drastically.

>> No.1135631

You could take a compressed air bottle and a magnetic valve which is closed when electricity is on. so when the power fails the valve opens.

>> No.1135735

>>1135408
Depending on your layout you could integrate a water cyclone as the return to your aquaponic system. The water from your beds returns to the fish tank via a funnel. The water spinning down pulls in quite a bit of air.

I was able to completely eliminate a main air pump after building mine. I have a backup airpump in case the water pump fails, but its fired off by a microcontroller with an array of three oxygen sensors.

>> No.1135745

>>1135619

If most people have backups why not ask them how they do it?

>> No.1135965

>>1135735
I have a koi pond if you are not worried about the pump and the aerator going down in unison I would just have the water return pump set to break the surface tension of the water. If you have good flow it should buy you long enough to realize your air pump is out. I have an extra air pump on hand as the do wear out like clockwork.

>> No.1135973

>>1135468

duplex two air pumps and cycle them

also a DO probe would probably be much easier than checking pressure/current

>> No.1136074

>>1135408
Two pumps, measure the current going to them, if one fails, start the other one automatically. Arduino, relays, current sensors, done. KISS

>> No.1136079

>>1136074
>>1135973
That was the initial idea. An arduino with a relay measuring the current and if its absent a 12v car batterie gets connected to a matching airpump.

The problem with measuring the current is that the membrane and connected partd inside the airpump might fail but the motor is still running.
Therefore i'd prefer to measure DO or airpressure inside the tubes.

>> No.1136111
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1136111

>>1135408

In my system (CHOP), the only thing I'm using the air pump for is to run a moving bed biofilter and the water dumps into the growbed after that. I have a rather large air pump and one of the outlets is capped (don't need it right now). The fish tank is aerated using a venturi.

My water pump is 800gpm and has to push up 5' from sump to tank (150g) and I have that tuned down to about 500-600gpm. The venturi is 3/4 pvc to 1/2 pvc and back to 3/4. The inlet air tube for the venturi is 1/4". The tank inlet (after the venturi) is 90deg down into tank then 90deg then a 1'6" run of pvc with a few holes drilled in it for the air to dissipate. The pic is from when this was new and I've since put in a longer "air tube" (that one is not 1'6"). That works great for 15+ large sunfish.

I don't have anything other than manual backup. I've only had one system malfunction in a year where the system was down for about 8 hours. It could probably take a couple of days of downtime as bream/sunfish/bluegill are quite robust (and I'm using hydroton in the grow beds so plants ok). Nevertheless, I'm seeing up real time monitoring.

Look up DIGITEN-Effect-Sensor-Flowmeter-Counter on Amazon.

That hooked to a Rasp Pi or similar will give you me to the second flow rates and it would require very little coding to do so (I do software dev. for a living so ymmv). From there, I can feed the data to a web server or whatever where it can be easily accessed (pull it down via phone app for instance).

Sorry if I went overboard with the info...and took you in a different direction (i.e. monitoring water flow instead of air pressure).

>> No.1136261
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1136261

>>1136111
Hey man, thanks for taking the time to reply.

I have around 100-150 Tilapia throughout the year on 2200L tank with a 900L sump. (Not all adults at the same time)
You'll agree that Aeration is a must and a breakdown would mean a bad time for lots of animals.
I separate the shit ASAP and mineralise it in two 220L barrels and so on.

I used arduino before to do datogging but it became a huge pain in the ass with too many different sensors and device like rtc an sdcard modules.

My automatation runs on a siemens sps but i ponder building a datalogger with rasppi and maybe integrate the failswitch.
Thoughts on datogging with pi?
I only know c++ basics, will python be hard to learn?

Also look on the spidersnail in my greenhouse.

>> No.1136436

>>1136261

If you know the basics of c++ then Python should be a breeze. It took me about a few hours to learn the syntax and a little about the libraries and such.

Learn the libraries as you go and don't try to code too many things by had as there are usually already coded library's done officially or somewhere on git

>> No.1136572

>>1136436
Spunds good, ill get into it. Are there decent housings for rpi that allow to use a shitload of wires for all the sensors?