Fish feeder demo

Set up

Installing the brass feeder

If the brass feeder mechanism is not fitted to the top motor platform you need to use the Allen key to attach it as illustrated in this short video. Remember to make sure that the back post of the mechanism is very close but not touching the motor platform.

The brass feeder mechanism for zebrafish takes food for adult zebrafish. The food commonly used in the UK is the ZM400 (size range 400-600 microns) from ZM Systems. We have also used Zebrafeed 400-600 from Sparos, and this is available worldwide (inc. in US, from Techniplast). Other similarly sized, slow-sinking fish food that does not become sticky will work reliably for fish reward.

There is a different pellet delivery feeder for mice & rats.

You may also set up the motor platform with the peristaltic pump for liquid delivery. See the Peristaltic pump demo.

Script Explanation

This demo script shows how to use the feeder mechanism. There are two commands for the feeder (as illustrated in the test script below):

FEEDER(1), which rotates the mechanism until the divot is in position to drop solid food.

FEEDER(0) activates a “fake feed”, which will create the noise of the feeder, but the mechanism does not rotate enough to drop any food.

You will hear and see the feeder turning when you run this script.

INCLUDE ZSYS 
 
DEFINE ITI 1 
DEFINE TRIALS 2 
 
ACTION MAIN 
 
 INVOKE(FEEDER_TEST,TRIALS) 
 
COMPLETE 
 
 
ACTION FEEDER_TEST 
 
 WAIT(ITI) 
 FEEDER(1)
 WAIT(ITI) 
 
 WAIT(ITI) 
 FEEDER(0)
 WAIT(ITI) 
 
COMPLETE

Script download

To download the feeder_demo script as a .zs file (file type Zantiks software reads), choose the Save File As option in the right-click dialogue box. Clicking on the script name hyperlink will open a read-only version of the script.

Script download:
feeder_demo.zs

Video demo

This video shows you how to run the feeder demo service on the AD unit.