First and foremost, I wanted the system to be self-sustaining with as little input from me as possible. I obviously could've set up a mechanical timer for my pump and airstones, and honestly it likely would be more reliable in the long run, but what fun is that? Also, Two of my favorite automations are: turning my air pump back on if I left it off after feeding, and cycling the pump variably every n minutes based on water temp, outdoor temp and soil moisture. I also have an extra automation set up that will turn off the water pump if it ever runs for more than 2 minutes, just to make sure it never overflows. I'd still like to add a manual overflow eventually just in case.
Is it still working?
One of my biggest fears is killing a whole tank of fish because an air or water pump stopped working for an extendened period of time. To combat this I created an automation that will monitor expected power usage and send me a notifcation if the pump didn't start drawing power at the expected time.
Water Pump automation
So far, I've had great luck with the DC Jebao water pump. It only uses 40 watts to pump almost 1600 gph. It's honestly overkill for my system but I thought the larger more powerful motor and impeller would prevent from getting clogged up with fish waste and I needed a fair bit of head to pump the water up to my vertical system. This provides plenty of flow even at 8'. I'll keep this post up to date with how long it lasts.
From what I've read, the pump is likely to last longer if I leave it running all the time rather than cycling it off and on.
Heater Automation
Once the koi are older, I won't need a heater but I got them as peanuts and they needed heated water. Problem was that the heater wouldn't go any lower than 75 which was higher than I wanted. I have an Ambient Weather station that had a water temp sensor with it so I only turn on the heater when the water was below 76 degrees in order to by pass the heater's internal thermostat. UPDATE: the fish are now old enough to keep the temps in the 40s during winter. When the water is this cold, the fish need almost no food during the winter months, and therefore produce very little waste, which is what I need since there are no plants to soak up the excess nitrates.
Air Pump Automation
I love this Hygger air pump because it's almost completely silent. It's enough to run two 4" air stones. The only automation linked to this is what I talked about above, to make sure it turns back on if I leave it off and to tell me if it fails and stop running entirely.
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