The Redneck Aquaculture Sys has now been automated and the capacity has been increased through the following changes:
1)an automatic feeder, pictured in the first photo below, has been installed. This little feeder (from Aquatic sys) provides multiple feeding cycles each day of varying length. Next to the feeder you can also see the aeration system which is a right-off- the-shelf comm... sys from Academy.
2)An aux tank has been added to provide a source of constant fresh water exchange. The tank shown in the second photo below is an old 150 gallon stock tank with an automatic water level float. This tank will also serve much later on as a grow-out tank for small fry which hopefully will come later.
3)To complete the water change sys, icemaker tubing was added to siphon from 0 to 250 gallons per day as shown in photo 3 below. Initially, the siphon is set to provide a 15% water change daily and adjustments from that setting will be made as necessary.
Thus far system costs are about the same as the cost of a large automatic fish feeder. The only problems encountered thus far have been in managing the ammonia levels. That problem now seems to be under control with the biological filters getting fully seasoned and the addition of the stock tank with fresh water exchange. The system can now run itself for at least a week and possibly two weeks with the only manual intervention to check ph and ammonia levels.
