Low saline aquaponics system with Silver Pompano as a candidate species

Aquaponics is a sustainable food production system that integrates hydroponics and aquaculture practices in order to attain optimum utilization of nutrients by re-cycling. Aquaponics facilitates the symbiotic production of vegetables and fishes with minimum inputs, organic farming like management and higher control on production. Aquaponics system is extremely water efficient, does not require soil and does not use fertilizers or chemical pesticides. Silver pompano Trachinotus blochii is a preferred candidate species for mariculture due to the availability of hatchery produced seed, adaptability to commercial pellet feeds, good market demand and excellent meat quality. The species has proven good for farming in both marine as well as low saline water bodies. Adopting the principles of nutrient utilization in aquaponics and the ability of silver pompano to grow in low saline conditions, a prototype of a low saline aquaponics system integrating one month reared fingerlings of silver pompano T. blochii, with a common, leafy vegetable Amaranthus by employing a 0.25 hp submersible pump for recirculation was developed

Seasonal availability of commercially important fish seeds in estuaries of Kozhikode, Kerala

Availability of fish seed for culture is one of the major constraints in expanding mariculture in India. Capture-based aquaculture (CBA) is the practice of rearing wild collected fish seeds from early life stages to adults in captivity to marketable size, employing different aquaculture techniques. It is estimated that about 20 percent of world aquaculture production comes from CBA. The availability of cultivable fish seeds in estuaries of Kozhikode district in Kerala has been surveyed and the potential wild seed grounds identified were in Kadalundi, Korapuzha and Karuvanthuruthi estuaries. The quantitative availability of fish seeds in these localities during different seasons was evaluated

Acanthopagrus berda - a potential species for mariculture in India

Sea breams belonging to the sparidae familyare excellent food fishes and important candidate species for aquaculture. Globally, the river bream, Acanthopagrus berda is highly valued in commercial fisheries and aquaculture due to their excellent meat quality, market demand, easy adaptability to captivity and ability to tolerate wide variations in both salinity and temperature. A. berda is distributed in the estuarine and shallow coastal waters of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat coasts (Fig.1). Locally known as “Karuthaeri” along Kerala coast they are fished by artisanal fishers using cast nets and hook & line and fetch ` 400-500 per kg in the domestic markets. At present, India is looking for native food fishes for mariculture development and A. berda is considered as a priority species due to their high market demand

Orange Chromide (Etroplus maculatus): A promising indigenous fish for marine aquariums

Etroplus maculatus, commonly known as Orange chromide is a euryhaline fish endemic to brackishwater streams, lagoons, estuaries and the lower reaches of rivers in peninsular India and Sri Lanka. In India, it occurs in Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The Orange chromide at present is mainly utilized as freshwater and brackishwater ornamental fish as it is reported to survive in water close to 21‰ salinity after gradual acclimatization. The present study was conducted to determine the salinity tolerance of E. maculatus to know the scope of this species to be selected as a marine ornamental fish

Bflier's: A Novel Butterfly Inspired Multi-robotic Model in Search of Signal Sources

The diversified ecology in nature had various forms of swarm behaviors in many species. The butterfly species is one of the prominent and a bit insightful in their random flights and converting that into an artificial metaphor would lead to enormous possibilities. This paper considers one such metaphor known as Butterfly Mating Optimization (BMO). In BMO, the Bfly follows the patrolling mating phenomena and simultaneously captures all the local optima of multimodal functions. To imitate this algorithm, a mobile robot (Bflybot) was designed to meet the features of the Bfly in the BMO algorithm. Also, the multi-Bflybot swarm is designed to act like butterflies in nature and follow the algorithm's rules. The real-time experiments were performed on the BMO algorithm in the multi-robotic arena and considered the signal source as the light source. The experimental results show that the BMO algorithm is applicable to detect multiple signal sources with significant variations in their movements i.e., static and dynamic. In the case of static signal sources, with varying initial locations of Bflybots, the convergence is affected in terms of time and smoothness. Whereas the experiments with varying step-size leads to their variation in the execution time and speed of the bots. In this work, experiments were performed in a dynamic environment where the movement of the signal source in both maneuvering and non-maneuvering scenarios. The Bflybot swarm is able to detect the single and multi-signal sources, moving linearly in between two fixed points, in circular, up and down movements.To evaluate the BMO phenomenon, various ongoing and prospective works such as mid-sea ship detection, aerial search applications, and earthquake prediction were discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 17 figure

Gonadal Assessment of Picnic Sea Bream Acanthopagrus berda (Forsskål 1775), a Potential Aquaculture Candidate for Indian Waters

Gonadal assessment of Acanthopagrus berda (Forsskål 1775), a commercially and recreationally important fish from Indian waters, was studied by collecting 250 fishes from the Korapuzha estuary, Calicut, Kerala using cast net during December 2015 to January 2016. External morphology of the gonads reveals that A. berda is bisexual (with ovo-testis) in nature with the ovarian lobe in the mid-dorsal region of the abdominal cavity and the testicular lobe as a band along the ventro-lateral wall with a major portion running along the extreme posterior region of the gonad. Males were dominant in lower length classes (17–23 cm) while females dominated in upper length classes (24–43 cm), confirming protandrous hermaphroditism in the species. Gonado-somatic index (GSI) was significantly higher (P<0.05) for the females. Males and transitional groups were showing almost similar GSI. External morphological and histological evaluation of the gonads of A. berda during the 2-month study revealed the presence of different developmental stages such as matured testis with oozing milt, an intermediate gonad structure with an anterior thin ovary-like structure and a posterior thick testis-like morphology indicating a transitional ovo-testis, maturing ovary and matured ovary. The simultaneous availability of milt oozing males and matured females from the wild indicates the opportunity for development of captive breeding, seed production and hatchery technology for this important commercial food fish

Acanthopagrus berda (Forsskål, 1775)

Acanthopagrus berda has a fairly deep, compressed body with depth about twice in standard length. Head is about 3 or 4 times in standard length with straight upper profile (sometimes with a bulge above eye) and pointed snout. Both jaws contain 4-6 large, compressed teeth in front, followed by 3-5 rows of molar-like teeth; upper lateral teeth of outer row conical and blunt. There are about 9-11 gill rakers on the lower limb of first arch. The species has a single dorsal fin with 11 (rarely 12) spines and 10-13 soft rays. The spines of dorsal fin appear alternately broad and narrow on either side with 4th to 6th spines longest. Anal fin contain 3 spines and 8 or 9 soft rays

Real-time vibration monitoring in Android smart phone using Location Based Service

Abstract: In the present study we propose the implementation of Location Based Service for real-time vibration monitoring of a moving vehicle. The purpose of this study is to prevent damage to delicate payload being carried by trucks or trailers which occurs due to vibrations during transportation. We have first designed a vibration detector circuit by connecting a vibration detector to an Arduino-Uno printed circuit board. This board was then interfaced to an Android smart phone with the help of a Bluetooth module. The sensor reading displayed on the Android smart-phone was sent over mobile GPRS to a web-GIS server. The data stored in the GIS database was then dynamically plotted as a line-graph on a web page and also overlaid on Google Earth&apos;s satellite image in the form of a KML (Keyhole Markup Language) file