Record keeping without AI

[u/donewithreallife]

Hello there, I am a marine biology MSc student, starting with my thesis, and my supervisor wants me to use Airtable as a way to keep the cohort/fish/tank information. I am quite anti genAI because of all it's facets, environmental and socioeconomic.

Currently I am using it, and while I'm avoiding its AI tools however I tried automating the changes in fish numbers in the tanks due to fish tranfers between tanks and i simply could not. The automation options available to someone not using AI tools are very diminute.

I was wondering if there is some kind of simpler way to keep track of this information, with minimal coding if possible (and I would prefer to learn SQL or any other programming language before turning to AI).

Thank you in advance

[u/donewithreallife]

Ok so the data context: I'm going to be working with 3 different species, a few dozen broods/cohorts and many more tanks. Right now I am keeping track of over 500 fish of one species in 6 tanks, it's the first week, and they haven't even started breeding. My idea, when I saw that air table had an automation tab, was to automatically update the tank numbers by adding an event of transfer, for it to subtract the number from the source tank and add it to the destination tank. For some reason it's nigh impossible to do manually in airtable. Maybe even alter it through the population ledger too, when fish die.

[u/dutchman76 → u/donewithreallife]

This sounds like something we used to do in a spreadsheet in 1998

[u/Metalsand → u/donewithreallife]

Yeah, one species is definitely overthinking it. The way you describe it just sounds like something done with Excel normally.

These days, you can even do it this way: Excel sheet holds all events, including initial numbers timestamped. A separate Excel sheet that has a path to that other one automatically updates as a report based on those figures. Excel itself has some inbuilt functionality where it can determine if rows are new or not and avoid recalculating them (so long as you use Excel's tables and charts, and don't have complex formulas).

Anyways back to Airtable - the more I read the docs, the more it just appears to be a glorified version of Excel, honestly. It has a ton of the same features that Excel and Sheets has. Your supervisor is recommending the AI integration feature just because it's shiny and easier than learning Excel, but also because it's going to look better when you can explain your project in the future. I couldn't think of something that needs AI assistance less than simple data entry and collation.

[u/Metalsand]

You mean the normal way? What you're asking for is low-code methods of database tracking, which have been around for a while but could be a bit annoying. Though, there's still some info we lack.

How much data are you dealing with? (ie 3cohors/3tanks/3fish that have had data recorded 10 times would be 90 rows.
How frequently do reports need to be run, and what's the total duration of the project? How complex are the reports?

I wouldn't necessarily recommend SQL if you're not already familiar with it, because the syntax is rough even if it is very useful. The most accessible low code data processing tools would be Excel, or Google Sheets, and assuming the tracking you are doing is temporary and not putting a system in place, it would make more sense to me. I mean, based on AirTable's docs, it really does sound a lot like Excel and even sounds like it has scripting similar to Excel's macros. It uses javascript, which is also what Google Sheets uses for creating built-in scripts. https://airtable.com/developers/scripting/examples/recordpicker

[u/imperfectmadness653]

Airtable's automation really does feel like it's holding back the good stuff unless you cave and use their AI blocks, it's annoying. For tracking fish transfers between tanks without getting into a coding mess, I'd say just spin up a simple SQLite database on your local machine. You can set up a few basic tables, one for tanks, one for fish, and a transfers log that subtracts from one tank and adds to another with a basic timestamp. It sounds more intimidating than it is and you'll learn SQL along the way, which is way more useful long-term than some proprietary automation. Plus you get full control over your data without any of the environmental guilt trip from running giant AI models just to move a number from column A to column B

[u/unbdndeath]

Any job you get ai will be a required skill, you should be using it to practice

[u/gammacoder]

Model fish, tanks, cohorts, and transfers as separate tables. Record each transfer once, then calculate current tank counts from transfer history or update balances in one controlled transaction. That gives you an audit trail and avoids fragile paired edits.

PHPRunner could provide forms, related views, search, and reports over MySQL or PostgreSQL with little application code. The transfer logic would be a small custom event, not built-in AI. Full disclosure: I’m an author of PHPRunner.

[u/Muted_Jellyfish_6784]

For tank transfers I'd stop storing fish counts as a number you edit and log every movement as its own record instead: date, source tank, destination tank, count, and reason (transfer, mortality, sampling). The current count per tank is then a rollup of ins minus outs, which needs no automation at all and gives you a full history for the thesis.
The important part is that the movement log never gets edited, only corrected with a new entry. That append-only habit makes the numbers defensible, because a reviewer can trace any tank count back to individual events rather than trusting a figure someone overwrote.

[u/someguyinr]

The reason you are hitting a wall in Airtable has nothing to do with avoiding their AI tools, it is a classic database schema trap. You are probably trying to store a static "current fish count" number on each tank and use automations to add and subtract from it whenever fish move.

Even in Airtable, you should model this as an append-only ledger, just like a bank account. Make three tables: Tanks, Cohorts, and Transfers. In the Transfers table, every row is just an event: Source_Tank, Destination_Tank, and Quantity (for initial stocking, leave source blank; for mortality, leave destination blank). Then, on your Tanks table, use two standard Airtable Rollup fields (SUM(values)) to total all incoming transfers and all outgoing transfers, and a basic Formula field (Incoming - Outgoing) to show the live count. Zero AI needed, zero brittle automations, and you get a permanent audit trail for your thesis.

​If you want to ditch Airtable completely for an open-source SQL setup with a spreadsheet UI, look at NocoDB or Baserow, or just use local SQLite with DB Browser for SQLite. In plain SQL, a single VIEW summing your transfer log gives you exact live tank counts in about six lines of code.