Progress 01/01/23 to 12/31/23
Outputs
Target Audience:Ecotoxicology, aquaculture industry, CPS community, and desalination community. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The implementation and operation of the RAShas provided opportunities for training and professional development for undergraduate and graduate students in the field of biology, engineering, and environmental sciences. In addition to providing opportunities in their own disciplines, the project offered a unique platform for interdisciplinary training. For example, biology students have learned about electronic monitoring and networking, while electrical engineering students have learned how to work with aquatic systems. This project is engaging doctoral students in both biology andelectrical engineering by workingon novel respirometry assessments, comprehensive integration of animal life cycle into aquaculture systems, advancedvideo monitoring system development, and computer vision-based aquatic behavioral assessment. Development of the real-time water quality monitoring system was accomplished by a team of senior design electrical engineering students, therefore having animpact on the education and training of undergraduate engineering students, who have since graduated and are now part of the workforce. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?SETAC North America: A poster presentation was showcased at the annual North American Society of Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) meeting, held November 12-16, 2023 in Louisville Kentucky. This event brought together hundreds of professionals from academia, industry, and government sectors worldwide. The poster informed this community of the importance of managing the concentrate from desalination processesand the challenges of developing brackish water aquaculture.https://www.setac.org/discover-events/global-meetings/setac-north-america-44th-annual-meeting/program/daily-schedule.html Please see list of products: Emadi, C., F. Dos Santos Neto, B. Smithers, M. Acevedo, and E. Mager. (2023) Toxicity Assessment and Real-Time Metabolic Trait Responses of Juvenile Macrobrachium rosenbergii to Ammonia Exposure at Different Salinities. Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry North America Annual Meeting, Louisville, KY. 7th Integrative Biology Workshop: A poster was presented at this workshop, hosted from October 27-31, 2023 in Toluca, Mexico. This workshop marked the 7th meeting in a series of ongoing collaborations between the University of North Texas and Autonomous University of the State of Mexico in Toluca, Mexico State. With a focus on Integrative Biology, this event primarily draws participation of students and faculty from the two universities, thus promotinginternational collaboration in the topics of this project. See workshop schedule at the following linkhttps://acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:1573d044-7533-3bce-a1c7-dd924c2cf803 Please see list of products: Emadi, C., F. Dos Santos Neto, B. Smithers, M. Acevedo, and E. Mager. (2023) Toxicity Assessment and Real-Time Metabolic Trait Responses of Juvenile Macrobrachium rosenbergii to Ammonia Exposure at Different Salinities. 7th Integrative Biology Workshop, Toluca, Mexico. Water Innovation and Networking Workshop: We gave a platform presentation at the 7th Annual Water Treatment Innovation and Networking (WIN) Workshop, held on October 23rd and 24th, 2023 in Alamogordo, NM. It was hosted by the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility (BGNDRF) and provided a platform for clients to share work in desalination and impaired water treatment. Industry leaders, researchers, and experts from around the world convened to explore innovations and foster collaboration. Link: https://www.usbr.gov/research/bgndrf/win.html Please see list of products: Emadi, C., F. Dos Santos Neto, E. Mager, B. Smithers, X. Li, and M. Acevedo. (2023) Desalination Concentrate as a Potential Resource for Inland Aquaculture. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Annual Water Innovations and Networking Workshop, Alamogordo, NM. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?During the next reporting period, we are planning to 1) finalize the hardware and software configurations of the video monitoring system for effective operation integrated with the RAS, water quality monitoring system, and the respirometry assessments,2) using deep learning models, develop amethod to determineunique behavioral patterns of prawns under stress conditions,3) experiment with data collection, data labeling, and training deep learning models by incorporating video monitoring capability in the respirometry system, 4) Once thecontrol respirometry experiments at all salinities are analyzed, we will completeammonia spiking experiments at all salinities, and integrate the findings with the bioassay results, 5) design and implement custom-made respirometers for two life stages/sizes of prawns that can be integrated in-line with our current RAS, 6) test and optimize these respirometry systems,and begin integrating with machine learning to serve as a sentinel early-detection system for changes in water quality, 7) develop models of animal growth and survival, and use the experimental results of respirometry and bioassays for callibration and validation, 8) develop the nutrient separation system to improve water quality in the RAS, while providing a nutrient rich stream to the future hydroponics system,9) implement the aquarium display and lesson plans for outreach activities at the Elm Fork Education Center so that it will be available for all visiting school districts in North Texas area, 10)provideopportunities to underrepresented groupsby planning and conducting summer research experiences for high school and undergraduate students, and 11) continue to disseminate project results by presenting at conferences and submitting manuscripts to peer-reviewed journals.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
In order to accomplish all objectives above, three Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS)were implemented in August 2023, each consisting of independent recirculating loops comprised of one 25-gallon tank and one 5-gallon biofilter. Each RAS has a flowrate of ~0.5 gallon per minute, which corresponds to ~30 turnovers per day. The systems have been operating continuously since then (with less than 1% water exchange/day) and are being tested with Macrobrachium rosenbergii (Giant river prawn)post-larvae (under 1g), juveniles (1-5g), and adults (>5g). The animals that were stocked in August 2023 have grown and matured in the system. Once the efficacy of the RAS system has been tested with success on all life stages of the animal, we will start to conduct trials using brine from desalination plants, monitor water quality parameters, compare survival and growth in different life stages, and start the implementation of the in-line respirometer. Working towards objective 1, four water quality parameters: pH, dissolved oxygen (DO), electrical conductivity (EC), and temperature are monitored continuously in the threeRAS mentioned above. This was accomplished by developinga real-time monitoring system comprised of a sensor network and a single board computer that compiles the data totransmitto a webserver anddatabase system.Using a human machine interface (HMI), these readings are available to the biology students that work with the animals on a daily basis, thereby providinginstant information onthequality of the water while they assess the health and growth of the animals. This setup serves as a pilot for what the operators of the future testbed can rely upon for itssuccessful operation. Therefore, this technologywill have an impact on the tools that the aquaculture community can use to improve the operation of their systems. The single board computer mentioned above is aRaspberry Pi (RPi), which is a low-cost and small footprint device that can be programmed with public domain software. This RPiis the brain of themonitoring system andexecutesa Graphical User Interface (GUI) created and powered through Node-Red for real-time data visualization, and data storageinto influxDB database. An advantage ofthis design is that the system can be scaled up to a larger number of RAS and to other water quality parameters. Indeed, each sensor operates independently, allowing for the system to be easily expanded or modified with additional sensors as needed. This design will have an impact on the aquaculture community because it can be adapted to different sizes of RAS implementations or to meet varying requirements of specific aquatic organisms. We have been developing thevideo monitoring system and deep learning models for computer vision-based aquatic behavioral assessment and toxicity prediction, which contribute to the objectives 1 and 3. The video monitoring system includes a RPias the field computing platform, a USB web cam, a webserver running in the RPi, web services designed for on-demand video streaming, and video sink softwarefordata collection. We areexperimenting with different configuration approaches for more effective monitoring and data collection from aquaponic systems. For the deep learning part of the project,we have started training YOLO v8 models with the video data samples collected from the animalscultured in the threeRAS mentioned above. We have been able to successfully detect and track animalsin the video stream data using the trained YOLO models. Currently, we are in the process of refining the training process and analyzing prawnsbehavioral patterns from the detection results obtained using the trained models, which is an essential step to progress towards behavioral assessment-based toxicity prediction. Similarly to the water quality monitoring system, successful demonstration of the validity of this approach will provide significant enhancement of tools that theaquaculture community can use make sure health and growth of the cultivated organisms. With respect to objective 3, as a first step toward integrating respirometry into a real-time toxicological assessment of water quality, we performed 48-hour bioassays at three salinities (1, 5 and 10 ppt) and a standard pH of 8.2 using ~40 day-old post-larvae exposed to a range of total ammonia concentrations as a focal toxicant.We selected ammonia because of its high relevance in high-density aquaculture systems given its propensity to accumulate, and thereby negatively affect the survival, growth, and overall health of aquatic animals. Survival data was collected, and corresponding median lethal (LC50) concentrations calculated, for four timepoints at each salinity: 3, 6, 24 and 48 hours.From this data, a concentration was selected (20 mg/L total ammonia) to begin testing whether ammonia spikes could be detected using real-time respirometry. To this end, we first collected control baseline data using juvenile shrimp in individual static respirometers at each of the three salinities (n=8/salinity). These tests were designed to not only inform baseline metabolic data, such as routine and standard metabolic rates (RMR and SMR, respectively), but also to inform as to the time required for the animals to habituate to the chambers (i.e., the initial period required to achieve RMR).Knowledge of the habituation period is important to ensure that the time of spiking with ammonia occurs after habituation to maximize sensitivity in the measured response.Next, we initiated a limited number of tests (n=2) at the intermediate (5 ppt) salinity to test whether a change in metabolic rate in response to the ammonia spike could be detected.While more tests and statistical analyses are pending, our preliminary predictionfrom inspection of the data, is that the observed prolonged increase in metabolic rate immediately following the ammonia spike is likely significant, thusproviding initial support that the approach will have success. In addition to its contribution to meetobjective 1, this information provides the basis to inform the development of models of organism growth and survival, which are the core of objective 4. In terms of outcomes, this metabolic information will provide an early warning system for aquaculturalists to provent episodes of mortality or lack of growth due to chemical stressors.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Emadi, C., F. Dos Santos Neto, B. Smithers, M. Acevedo, and E. Mager. (2023) Toxicity Assessment and Real-Time Metabolic Trait Responses of Juvenile Macrobrachium rosenbergii to Ammonia Exposure at Different Salinities. Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry North America Annual Meeting, Louisville, KY.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Emadi, C., F. Dos Santos Neto, B. Smithers, M. Acevedo, and E. Mager. (2023) Toxicity Assessment and Real-Time Metabolic Trait Responses of Juvenile Macrobrachium rosenbergii to Ammonia Exposure at Different Salinities. 7th Integrative Biology Workshop, Toluca, Mexico.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Emadi, C., F. Dos Santos Neto, E. Mager, B. Smithers, X. Li, and M. Acevedo. (2023) Desalination Concentrate as a Potential Resource for Inland Aquaculture. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Annual Water Innovations and Networking Workshop, Alamogordo, NM.
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