Comparison with Non Automated Aquaponics
Iponics is a new Agriculture Technology consisting of a blend of Hydroponics, Aeroponics & Aquaponics managed by automation augmented by Artificial Intelligence that is suited for every sector from Domestic to Broadscale Farming.
Sensors constantly monitor all aspects of the growing environment & assist natural growth.
Aided by a NIBS 'Network based Intelligent Bus System' that has been specifically developed & programmed for node based decision making. (More on NIBS here).
Aspects including weather forecasts, power costs, real time current water & soil conditions are all combined to control the growing cycles and manage the entire aqricultural process.
Inspired Beginnings.
Coming from a location with very poor & highly acidic soil that was subject to ground water reaching surface level it would seem any agriculture was not a viable prospect. Looking at different options, aquaponics was deemed to be the most cost effective solution of the options examined.
After setting up a dual system & after the units had balanced it was clear sailing for the first 8 months with very impressive results. Indeed we asked ourselves why was this not in widespread usage. It did not take long to find the answers why & how the initial boom in aquaponics in Australia had dropped away dramatically after a boom in uptake. Being an intensive agriculture system it clearly showed that dumb non automated aquaponics suffers disproportionately from any hardware or power fault during operation. Biological or climate events are also aleviated with autonomous intelligent control.
And any natural element that was not checked would lead to a rapid deterioration in operation or catrastrophic failure. Power outage involving aerator or pump failure, bell siphon misfunction or hardware faults such as air pump diaghrams failing would & did result in either massive fish kill or crop destruction through growbed flooding. Coming from a robotics & industrial services background I applied automation to the system.It became abundantly clear that automation would solve or aleviate many of the problems encountered. It was so wildly successful that we have created a packaged service for retrofit to existing systems or to build from scratch.
The advantages have been as follows.
1. Labour saving & peace of mind in being able to walk away fro extended periods of time as the system controls itself and to be able to monitor the situation remotely.
2 . Energy Savings. Critically important for stand alone solar and or wind systems. And economically advantageous for power from the grid. Power draw was controlled to prolong storage battery life as well as prevent drawing battery levels too low
3. Extended pump & aerator life. This was achieved by only switching aerators on to maintain oxygen levels. Air when needed. With the added benefit of retaining dissolved C02 levels for more efficient growing. C02 is iberated when finally sprayed over the grow media.
4. Target species was Rainbow Trout in system 1 & Jade Perch in System 2. Two totally differing eco systems with different parameter settings required. The Iponic controller maintained both their desired (or minimum survival levels) through out the growth cycle in a climate zone that would normally not support eiterh species all year round. In this case teh trout could be kept growing longer in summer by the lowering or maintaining water temp through the GLICs system & conversely the Jade Perch & Redclaw could survive the winter.
5. All processes were automated & meant that having to live next to the system was no longer required. The facility could be left to its own devices for up to 3 weeks. Longer if larger hoppers were fitted to the feeders. All process & controls could be accessed via mobile phone or computer anywhere in the world.
6. Automation of other devices was also achieved by linking security systems and sewage control to the IPONICS controller.
7. Increased growth rates in fish was noticeable as maximum feed rates were achieved by calculated feed tims at sunset sunrise & selected moon phases. Excess feeding was controlled by the use of ammonia sensors.
8. Nitrobacter & nitrosomonas levels enhanced by an activated sludge cycle in system 1 controlled via the Iponics system.
9. Ability to plant species outside of soil zone such as wine grapes & the ability to vector & control their nutrient levels with controlled wetting cycles & nutrient pumps.
Elements of Iponic Cultivation
