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ZAF which stands for 'Zebrafish Automatic Feeding' is an easy to build device that can automate fish feeding for your fish facility with minimal supervision. ZAF is an open access project with both hardware and software designs openly provided. We give all instructions for building ZAF, leveraging only commercially available parts. ZAF is designed to be maximally accessible for non-experts in electronics, mechanics and robotics -- we avoided complex parts, 3D printing, advanced electronics and tried to keep the design simple. We are providing a general manual to build ZAF, but the design is modular and can be adapted to the users need and usage.
ZAF comes in two versions: ZAF and ZAF+. The original ZAF is very easy to build but has some limitations (see below). ZAF+ addresses most shortcomings of ZAF but has a more advanced design but is also harder to build. The main limitation of ZAF is that it lacks precise control over the amount of food distributed to individual tanks. For example, ZAF distributes the same homogenised mix of food and water to all tanks. Therefore, if you have 12 fish in a tank and 6 in another, with ZAF they will receive the same amount of food. ZAF+ has the key advantage that it can control the amount of food you provide to each tank in your facility.
We have used ZAF successfully in our facility and found it to be very beneficial for general feeding during the weekend and holidays. However, if what you need is daily automated feeding then ZAF+ is a better choice. ZAF+ builds upon the existing modules of ZAF, but adds better flow control and variable food delivery thanks to more efficient pumps and a valve-based distribution system. Moreover, ZAF+ design allows for arbitrary scaling of the number of feeding lines, thus making it possible, in theory, to automatically feed fish in large facilities. We give instructions for both versions because we believe that different fish facilities and different users will have different needs and skills.
We designed a Graphical User Interface (GUI), to help the user run their own feeding programs. We tried our ZAFs with both dry and solid food and it works perfectly well. ZAF can help overcome staffing issues during weekends and holidays and can be used together with a camera system for remote monitoring. Additionally, ZAF+ can control the amount of food per tank depending on the fish number or density. In our manuscript, we show that ZAF and ZAF+ are good for fish health and reproduction rate and did not affect the water quality of the fish rack. All together, we hope that ZAF will help to facilitate the establishment of fish colonies in labs and will push zebrafish research into a new era.
You will find the detailed protocols to build your own ZAF and ZAF+. Both share a common design principle and ZAF+ is designed as an extension of ZAF. So, if after building ZAF you feel adventurous, we strongly recommend you build ZAF+, a slightly more complex device, but with more advanced features. Thus, even though we present two independent manuals, they share some common modules such as the food mixing.
The manuals for ZAF and ZAF+ are divided into three main parts:
- The hardware
- The electronics
- ZAF control software
ZAF -- an open source fully automated feeder for aquatic facilities. Merlin Lange, Ahmet Can Solak, Shruthi Vijaykumar, Hirofumi Kobayashi, Bin Yang, & Loic A. Royer