PUBLICATION
ZAF, the first open source fully automated feeder for aquatic facilities
- Authors
- Lange, M., Solak, A., Vijay Kumar, S., Kobayashi, H., Yang, B., Royer, L.A.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-211214-16
- Date
- 2021
- Source
- eLIFE 10: (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Royer, Loic
- Keywords
- developmental biology, zebrafish
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animal Feed
- Animals
- Aquaculture/instrumentation*
- Aquaculture/methods
- Automation/instrumentation*
- Automation/methods
- Data Collection
- Feeding Behavior
- Software*
- Zebrafish/physiology*
- PubMed
- 34882088 Full text @ Elife
Citation
Lange, M., Solak, A., Vijay Kumar, S., Kobayashi, H., Yang, B., Royer, L.A. (2021) ZAF, the first open source fully automated feeder for aquatic facilities. eLIFE. 10:.
Abstract
In the past few decades, aquatic animals have become popular model organisms in biology, spurring a growing need for establishing aquatic facilities. Zebrafish are widely studied and relatively easy to culture using commercial systems. However, a challenging aspect of maintaining aquatic facilities is animal feeding, which is both time- and resourceconsuming. We have developed an open-source fully automatic daily feeding system, Zebrafish Automatic Feeder (ZAF). ZAF is reliable, provides a standardized amount of food to every tank, is cost-efficient and easy to build. The advanced version, ZAF+, allows for the precise control of food distribution as a function of fish density per tank, and has a user-friendly interface. Both ZAF and ZAF+ are adaptable to any laboratory environment and facilitate the implementation of aquatic colonies. Here we provide all blueprints and instructions for building the mechanics, electronics, fluidics, as well as to setup the control software and its user-friendly graphical interface. Importantly, the design is modular and can be scaled to meet different user needs. Furthermore, our results show that ZAF and ZAF+ do not adversely affect zebrafish culture, enabling fully automatic feeding for any aquatic facility.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping