Many zebrafish researchers conduct some type of screening, either genotyping or screening embryos to identify carriers of novel or characterized genetic mutations or transgenes. While these individuals or pairs of zebrafish are being screened, they are either housed in small tanks (0.8 – 1L) on the main system or they are housed in small containers and kept off of the main system.
Keeping individuals or pairs of fish in small individual tanks (0.8 – 1L) is an extremely inefficient use of system space and water considering fish need only a fraction of that volume. The DC-96 allows researchers to house 24 individual fish in less than 6 rack slots while still allowing fish to have more than 0.2L of water in each compartment.
When keeping fish off of the main system for screening common concerns include deteriorating water quality, the inability to offer feed, and extreme time limitations. The DC-96 offers an efficient alternative to keeping fish off of the system even when labs have limited rack space available.
The DC-96 is ideal for holding fish while fin clips are processed for: traditional genotyping, KASP (Kompetitive Allele Specific PCR) assays, ID’ing Zinc Finger Nuclease (ZFN), and Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nuclease (TALEN) mutant carriers, or new transgenic carriers, and any other procedure that requires keeping individual fish separate from the rest of a population.
By removing dividers you can easily double the size of the holding compartment to accommodate a pair of zebrafish. This arrangement is ideal for holding pairs while embryos are screened for phenotypic defects or transgenic expression. In addition to routine screening experiments, the DC-96 is an excellent choice for housing pairs during ENU mutagenesis screens.
Although the DC-96 was designed with zebrafish in mind, it is also suitable for any research involving small aquatic species that need to be kept individually, including medaka and killifish.
Specific features:
- When set up to hold 24 individuals the compartments of the DC-96 hold over 200 ml of water each. A small gap at the bottom of dividers allows water, waste, and food to travel from compartment to compartment and then down the drain.
- Feed artemia or other live feeds to the first compartment and the food will flow to all of the compartments in that section giving all of those fish ample feeding time. Feed 24 individual fish with six squirts of artemia compared to feeding 24 individual tanks over multiple shelves.
- Four tanks used together mirror a 96 well plate.
- Removable dividers make for easy setup, break down, and cleaning.
- Fits on many existing rack systems directly or using the DC-96 Shelve Stand
DC-96 benchtop
ZEBCARE has developed and add-on rack holding 4 DC-96 tanks, that can be connected to an existing husbandry system.