About a month ago we purchased a small freshwater fish tank for my son. Now, as some may know, I have a little experience with aquariums. After a month of testing the water and farting around with dipping drops of test solution in tiny little vials, I got bored with the process. Surely modern technology has come further over the last 15 years since I first stood up my last tank. Surely there is an inexpensive, reliable, and comprehensive solution on the market for monitoring/controlling aquariums? Yeah, right.

Don’t get me wrong, there are solutions. The least expensive one is $119, and $279 for what I want. I could of purchased stand alone meters, but in the end it would of cost more ($89 each). So my natural reaction was to google DIY solutions. I found a fair number of people who have built controllers around the open source Arduino platform, which I have some experience with.

So I set out to build myself a aquarium monitor that can monitor pH, temperature, and will keep track of the date/time. Turns out there is a wealth of information on the web showing how to do this, and a bunch of crafty companies have made it really easy.

This article talks about my experience, the process, and the results. Hope you enjoy it.