The following is a brief description of the SIVE LAB fish facilities, which consists of three separate fish systems:

The first system we started is a fully enclosed Marine Biotech Industries System. It consists of three separated levels of five 9 ltr. glued plexiglass tanks. Each shelf has its own timed lighting system for maintaining independent Photo periods. As far as we can tell, this system was a MBI prototype. It has its flaws, but it is stable enough that we currently use it as an isolation system for bringing in adult fish from other labs. From here we extract eggs that are in turn bleached and sent to our main fish room to be raised to adulthood.

Our main fish room holds the majority of the Sive Lab fish stocks. This Marine Biotech System consists of three independent groups of tanks. The largest of the three utilizes four sets of six shelf racks. Each shelf can hold eighteen 2 ltr. tanks. It also has an integrated photocabinet with six shelves holding a total of sixty six 2 ltr. tanks and a rack of eight 10 ltr. tanks that are used for bulking up our wild type breeding stocks. The other two systems are matching independent Zebrafish modules. Each can hold sixty six 2 ltr. tanks and are used primarily to spread out our important fish stocks on multiple systems as a precaution to possible system failure. As a whole , the MBI systems are solid as long as you can take care of evaporation issues and keep an eye on the ever clogging water outflows. The systems also have vast expanses of plumbing and drainage shelves where detritus can collect with out being seen. For us, this has not been a problem, but for some it can be a nightmare.

The newest addition to the Sive lab facility is an Aquatic Habitats Zplex system. This collection of tanks was put together mainly for the Zebrafish screens that take place in our lab which require many small volume tanks to isolate individual fish. The system is made up of two independent setups, a Zplex standalone module and a four rack five shelf system. The standalone holds thirty 9 ltr. tanks and is mainly used for holding large numbers of individual families of zebrafish. The remaining racks are used to hold up to four hundred 1 ltr. tanks, which are ideal for isolating individual fish. For the most part, the Aquatic Habitat systems are well thought out except for their strong tendency to grow algae very quickly due to the openess of the racks to light. This algae can quickly clog their tank baffles which leads to green tanks that overflow onto the floor. This problem makes for much higher maintance than the MBI setup. They have come up with blue tinted tank covers and baffles that may help with the problem, but I have not heard of its success.

If you have any specific questions about how we care for our fish here at the Sive Lab, feel free to forward them to the facilities manager, Olivier Paugois, at paugois@wi.mit.edu.