IoT-Enabled Water Quality and Habitat Monitoring System for Sustainable Aquatic Animal Environments

Abstract

The quality of water is the main consideration to the sustainability, production, and wellbeing of aquatic animal farming systems. Traditional manual monitoring systems tend to be insufficient to identify high rate and damaging environmental changes which results in low growth outcomes, epidemics and high stock wastages. This paper outlines the design, development, and experimental research of an Internet of Things (IoT)-based water quality and habitat monitoring solution that is expected to monitor and secure the creation of stable and healthy aquatic systems. The suggested system is an autonomous system that monitors essential physicochemical conditions of the surrounding such as dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature, turbidity, concentration of ammonia, etc with a collection of low-cost and high-precise sensors connected to an edge-processing microcontroller unit. The obtained data are sent in the real-time mode to a cloud-based solution to be constantly visualised, stored, and generate automatic alerts as unsafe threshold rates are found. The system was implemented and experimented in several freshwater aquaculture ponds with a period of operations of 90 days. The experimental outcomes show that the stability of the water quality levels have improved significantly with few instances of hypoxic conditions, ammonia poisoning and spikes in turbidity. Significant mortality rates of nearly 20-30% in aquatic animals were also reduced as compared to the ponds that were under traditional management indicating that priority measures in detecting stress and prompt corrective measures were effective. Also, the system enhanced efficiency concerning resources since it facilitated efficient aeration and water exchange schedules. Its results verify that digital monitoring based on IoT creates a credible, scalable and cost-effective answer to smart aquaculture prohibition. The suggested system should add value to the development of sustainable and intelligent fish-farming due to its higher levels of environmental control, reduction of the ecological risks, and animal welfare.