Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Ok bit of an update on the automatic fish feeder.

Pic of all the components so far for the brains. Air pressure monitor to alert on air pump drop off. Real time clock. Temperature probe. LCD display. Still waiting for the stepper motor controllers to turn up.



A mock up of the controller case and display. The tanks can be controlled individually with different sized feed and sized fish. Size of the fish will determine how much feed is dispensed



Here is a pic of the fish feeder prototype so its not that pretty. Will be a container that has a scoop that rotates inside dropping feed out a chute at the side. We tried rotating the whole drum with a catch and drop system but it varied to much with the amount of feed in the container. There will be one per tank to allow for different feed size.



Motor asembly. This is just to prove and will be replaced with geared stepper motor



Slot where food will come out to a chute to the tank. Plus scoop shots

Pics of my air pump and battery backup system based on an APC UPS. Got the UPS off gumtree for $15 and used a couple of batteries I had laying around.

Seeds starting to come up nicely and have planted some tea herbs with the trees.

Four months later and its looking like this





And trout like this

Very nice Badger

And the mother of all beetroots

Auto fish feeders are almost done. Box is together and all the feeders are in place. Just tweaking a few lines of code and then final trials on the weekend. Screen shows the the time, temp and the feed times for each tank.

Great system, great progress and really cool feeder... I dont understand how it works but I love it. Very clever.

Will post a video once its working. Pretty much the timer kicks off in morning and afternoon. Computer inside check the tank (each of the three silver switches, one for each tank) switch. If on it then checks the feed setting for that tank (black dials) and dependent on the setting the actual feeder ( one for each tank) rotates a little bucket inside ( can just be seen inside on some earlier photos in this thread) and it scoops then drops the food out the top into a chute to the tank like a water wheel.

Long sentance I know but hope that helps.

And it check water temp every minute and prints out the feed time on the screen so you can check. Will be adding logging to an SD card. Sonic sensors to tell when the tanks or sump is getting low and eventually when I can figure it out networking so I can read all the settings and logs from my IPAD inside the house

Nice design. Did you think of doing it instead like Rob's (I.e. the geodesic dome Rob).

Have not seen Robs feeder. We had a look at a few types but this seemed the most robust and controllable solution.

Very simple idea. We built ours with what we had available. With the measeured scoop it is very easy to work out what we are feeding them as the fish grow.

Very simple idea. We built ours with what we had available. With the measeured scoop it is very easy to work out what we are feeding them as the fish grow and the pellet size changes.ie bit of code change for the scoops servered rather than working out how long to run to dispense x.

Harvested 18 fish yesterday. Ranged from 400 - 550 gms got another 20 that are under that so I will see how they go as the weather is cooling down next week.