DEVELOPMENT OF A MECHANICAL FISH FEEDER

Abstract

In these modern times, there are many fish farmers who live a busy life especially those who are away on business or vacation and one of the most important aspects of fish farming is feeding. There are often difficulties in maintaining a regular feeding schedule for their fish farm. However, for effective survival and growth, fishes require regular care which involves constantly feeding of small amounts of food at regular intervals, as underfeeding will lead to loss of fish due to starvation and overfeeding increases water density, clog filters among other effects resulting into extra expenditure of time and money in keeping the tank clean. A mechanical fish feeder was designed and fabricated. It is made up of hopper, barrel, which houses the screw conveyor (auger) and pond protector. Power supply to the machine is from 1.5 kW, 1420 rpm, single phase reduction electric motor. The performance evaluation of the machine was carried out. The aim was to investigate the rate of dispensed, damaged feed and the speed of operation (rev/min) on the performance of the machine. Floating feeds were bought from the market, introduced into the machine via hopper and data were collected as the feeds were dispensed. Machine speeds of 40 rpm, 50 rpm, 60 rpm, 70 rpm and 80 rpm were used to get their effects on the dispensing efficiency, throughput capacity and output capacity at various feed sizes of 2 mm, 4 mm and 6 mm. The mechanical feeder hopper was designed to have a volume of 850667 mm3, length of screw conveyor was 0.4 m with its capacity at 50 kg/h. The volume of the cylinder housing was 0.06364 m3, power required for the screw conveyor was 90 Watts and velocity of auger was 0.09740 ms-1. Result obtained from the tests showed that the mechanical fish feeder was effective to transport feed materials of 2 mm, 4 mm and 6 mm sizes through a horizontal screw conveyor with a dispensing efficiency of 92.2% recorded for 2 mm fish feed size at machine speed of 50 rpm. The ANOVA shows that machine speed has significant effect on the dispensing efficiency of the machine with significant figure of 0.01 (F>0.05). The highest throughput capacity was 75.67 kg/h for 2 mm, 73 kg/h for 4 mm and 70 kg/h at 6 mm for machine speed of 80 rpm. The ANOVA shows that machine speed has significant effect on the throughput capacity of the machine with significant figure of 0.00 (F>0.05) this means the feed would be properly transported to the surface of the water for the fish to feed. The highest output capacities were 60 kg/h for 2 mm feed size, 58 kg/h for 4 mm feed size and 55 kg/h for 6 mm feed size at 80 rpm The ANOVA shows that machine speed has effect on the output capacity of the machine with significant figure of 0.004 (F>0.05) as the machine speed increases; the output capacity increases. The cost of production of the mechanical fish feeder was ₦262,300.