Determining Fish Hunger State in a Smart Fish Farm Using Digital Signal Processing of the Water Current

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Applied Science (IJRIAS) | Volume VI, Issue VIII, August 2021|ISSN 2454-6194

Determining Fish Hunger State in a Smart Fish Farm Using Digital Signal Processing of the Water Current

Mbah, Frank Sunday¹, Kabari, Ledisi Giok^2
1Ignatius Ajuru University of Education, Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
²Ken Saro-Wiwa Polytechnic, Bori, Nigeria.

Abstract- The traditional method of feeding the fish in an aquarium leads to wastage of the feed and poor water quality as the water easily gets contaminated and consequently hampers fish growth. Also, the method of having a pre-set time has not much effect to the problem as it may lead to unequal feed distribution and starvation of the smaller fishes. A behavioural pattern whereby the fish can be fed anytime will balance feed intake by the fish and promote growth. It will also reduce wastage. The identified state where the fish are more settled at the water surface with much movement thereby increasing the water current is used in this work. A gyroscope is proposed for the measurement of angular displacement caused by the water current. Because of the non-availability of the gyroscope and other necessary conditions, a dataset was formulated and histogram function in Microsoft Excel used in plotting the signal state of the two conditions. The difference in the two signal levels guarantees the reliability of this process in determining when it is more appropriate to feed the fish using an automated method in a smart fishpond.

Keywords: Fishpond, hunger state, gyroscope, water current, fish behaviour.

I.INTRODUCTION

Fish production using aquarium plays a very significant role in the provision of fish requirement of the entire world population. Key to this is the feeding process employed in the farm. Fish feeding is a very critical issue in aquaculture industry. It represents 40 − 50% of the total production cost[1]. Apart from cost, it accounts for the growth of the fishes. Underfeeding will result in the starvation of the fishes causing retardation in growth. Overfeeding on the other hand will cause wastage of feeds which affects water quality causing shortage of oxygen in the water[2][3] and excess ammonia[4]. The effect of this will be slow rate of fish growth rate and eventual reduction in productivity and profitability efficiency.
An efficient feeding process is therefore highly desired to counter the above negative effects. There are different methods that have been used in processing the feed sessions of the fish. The methods can be majorly classified as manual and automated methods. The manual feeding method is directly operated by a person using parameters such as the average body weight of the fishes [3]. It is based on scheduled meals and is responsible for several problems such as fish growth unproductivity, non-uniformity in growth, environmental impact on ocean floors in case of open ocean

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