Decision Support System for Fish Ponds Mechanical Aeration Management（Extracts）

A properly designed decision support system（DSS）is an interactive software-based system intended to help decision makers compile useful information from different sources to identify and solve problems and make decisions.A Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheet was designed as a DSS to manage fish ponds mechanical aeration process based on the farm available data for highest possible field aeration efficiency.This utility will help farmers and extension workers to choose the aerator with highest efficiency and number of aerator units needed and managing his mechanical aerators in targeted ponds by calculating the power and operation time needed to keep the pond′s dissolved oxygen content in a safe value.The spreadsheet is suitable for warm water conditions for three types of fish，Tilapia，Mullet，and Carp.The data resulted from the calculations of the spreadsheet under assumed field conditions was compared to a reference data.The spreadsheet showed an agreement with the reference values.Field experiments on mechanically（MAP）and non-mechanically（NMAP）aerated ponds were conducted to examine the validation of this spreadsheet under fish ponds conditions.MAP managed by this system showed an increase in the fish production by 3.3%，besides saving 61.80% of water exchanged in ponds compared to NMAP.The results showed that the spreadsheet has worked successfully as a DSS considering making further studies on the calculations accuracy under different pond water environments and another fish types.