DIY Aquarium Controller/Monitor

[AquaStudent]

I have been brainstorming and researching for the past few months on building a custom aquarium controller using an arduino. I've seen things like the Apex and others but I feel like I can do something better for about a quarter of the price.

Right now the design would be to:

• monitor tank temperature (possibly at multiple locations, perhaps top and bottom)
• monitor room temperature
• use the tank temperature to control the heaters and prevent over-heating
• temperature status lights to visually alert if the temperature is out of the desired range (Blue=cold, green=happy, red=hot)
• float-switch to notify if water level drops (leak)
• Under tank water alarm
  
• webcam image of the aquarium (from inside the tank)
  
• organize all the data into an excel file and automatically email daily updates, track changes
• automatically send an email alarm if one of the above triggers fires

Other features I would like to include but am not sure of the best way to do it is a pH, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate probes. If used on a planted tank the gH, kH, and dissolved C02 would also be nice to track.

Perhaps long-term I can do something similar for a reef tank. Some measurements that may be nice to track over time or features to include on a reef monitor that I could think of would be:

• Salinity
• Conductivity
• Calcium
• PAR meter (although this may be difficult to hide)
• Some alert on a protein skimmer?
• light controls (this wouldn't work with my current systems but if you built them together from the start this would be nice)
• pump controls

I'm curious, what would you like to have automatically tracked in your aquarium?

If anybody has any experience with this type of project I would love to discuss it with you.

 

[mchambers]

Great list! I'd add conductivity to the list of freshwater measurements.

 

[AquaStudent]

Good call! I was thinking cool conductivity and TDS were the same thing but try do tell a different story.

I just realized that my planning spreadsheet is slightly different than what's on that first post. If there's not a good way to post a document I'll make an image.

 

[b considine]

Not to derail this thread, but aren't TDS and conductivity intimately linked? Amount of TDS determines conductivity or something?

I'm asking for someone else...

Blaise

 

[AquaStudent]

I think they are very similar but not exactly the same. I had the same thought and did a bit of Google searching. If I can find the documents again I'll repost.

I do recall that the units were different.