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ZAF, the first open source fully automated feeder for aquatic facilities
- Source :
- eLife, Vol 10 (2021), eLife
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- eLife Sciences Publications Ltd, 2021.
-
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 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.
- Subjects :
- QH301-705.5
Interface (computing)
Science
Control software
Aquaculture
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Automation
zaf
Animals
Biology (General)
User needs
open-source
Graphical user interface
General Immunology and Microbiology
business.industry
Data Collection
General Neuroscience
aquatic
Feeding Behavior
General Medicine
Modular design
zebrafish
Animal Feed
feeder
Open source
Fully automated
Fully automatic
automatic
Medicine
business
Software engineering
Software
Research Article
Developmental Biology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Volume :
- 10
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- eLife
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....c899a5e5a318d5db2d2177289aa85cda