As an important character of modern aquaculture, the monitoring of environmental factors is gaining more and more attention nowadays. To meet the urgent need for water quality monitoring in aquaculture, a kind of water quality detection system is designed, which can automatically collect water quality parameters and do self-maintenance. The system is composed of a wireless sensor module and a sensor protection module. The wireless sensor module uses GPRS wireless sensor technology to realize the collection and transmission of water quality parameters. The sensor protection module uses PIC16F877A MCU as controller and realizes remote communication with the server through ZigBee, thus controls the lift of the detection device as well as the flushing and moisturizing of water quality sensor. Through PC or mobile client, farmers can monitor and control the detection system in real time. Field test result shows that the system runs stably, is easy to install and convenient to operate, and can automatically detect pond water temperature, dissolved oxygen (DO) and pH; the remote control reaction time is less than 1s and the error rate of data transmission is almost 0; and, the maximum relative errors of DO, pH and temperature sensor are respectively 0.55%, 1.89% and 1.32%. Research shows that the mechanical structure of the system is stable, realizing the self-maintenance function of the sensor's flushing and moisturizing; the response speed of remote control and measurement accuracy can meet the requirements for water quality information collection, and satisfy the water quality detection demand of aquaculture industry.