Automated fish feeding system for an offshore aquaculture unit

One of the major challenges in aquaculture is fish feeding management. Inappropriate feeding practices could threat the fish’s growth and health, may lead to negative environment impact due to excess food contamination, and more importantly high operations cost. This study is aiming at proposing a fish feeding management system for OceanFarmITS, an offshore aquaculture unit designed by Marine Research Centre of Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember Surabaya. One of the most commercially popular fish, Tiger grouper is selected to be cultivated in OceanFarmITS pilot project. The fish feeding management systems include fish feeding arrangement and fish feeder system that is customized specifically to OceanFarmITS operations nature. Automatic fish feeder is an alternative to solve existing feeding problems such us inefficiency of conventional or manual feeding. The proposed system consists of a control system using microcontroller Arduino board to receive data from sensors then send the instruction to the motor driver. Moreover, it has alarm system that sends notification to Aquaculture operator when food storage in silo tank has reached a limit level. The proposed design of feeding system would support operations of OceanFarmITS to conduct feeding activity efficiently by minimizing operations cost and environmental impact while keep fish optimal growth.