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ZAF, the first open source fully automated feeder for aquatic facilities

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...

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Autores principales: Lange, Merlin, Solak, AhmetCan, Vijay Kumar, Shruthi, Kobayashi, Hirofumi, Yang, Bin, Royer, Loïc Alain
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8776251/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34882088
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74234
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author Lange, Merlin
Solak, AhmetCan
Vijay Kumar, Shruthi
Kobayashi, Hirofumi
Yang, Bin
Royer, Loïc Alain
author_facet Lange, Merlin
Solak, AhmetCan
Vijay Kumar, Shruthi
Kobayashi, Hirofumi
Yang, Bin
Royer, Loïc Alain
author_sort Lange, Merlin
collection PubMed
description 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 resource-consuming. 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.
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spelling pubmed-87762512022-01-21 ZAF, the first open source fully automated feeder for aquatic facilities Lange, Merlin Solak, AhmetCan Vijay Kumar, Shruthi Kobayashi, Hirofumi Yang, Bin Royer, Loïc Alain eLife Developmental Biology 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 resource-consuming. 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. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2021-12-09 /pmc/articles/PMC8776251/ /pubmed/34882088 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74234 Text en © 2021, Lange et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Developmental Biology
Lange, Merlin
Solak, AhmetCan
Vijay Kumar, Shruthi
Kobayashi, Hirofumi
Yang, Bin
Royer, Loïc Alain
ZAF, the first open source fully automated feeder for aquatic facilities
title ZAF, the first open source fully automated feeder for aquatic facilities
title_full ZAF, the first open source fully automated feeder for aquatic facilities
title_fullStr ZAF, the first open source fully automated feeder for aquatic facilities
title_full_unstemmed ZAF, the first open source fully automated feeder for aquatic facilities
title_short ZAF, the first open source fully automated feeder for aquatic facilities
title_sort zaf, the first open source fully automated feeder for aquatic facilities
topic Developmental Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8776251/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34882088
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74234
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