A Custom-Built Recirculating Zebrafish Housing System

Zebrafish are a popular model organism for performing in vivo studies, partly due to being considered inexpensive to house and maintain. Yet, commercial housing systems are typically cost-prohibitive to smaller research groups. Multiple custom-built zebrafish housing systems exist, but have issues with inconsistent water conditions, poor water cycling rates, and fragile housing tanks. These design issues reduce the viability of these systems for long-term research programs. In this article, we present a custom-built recirculating zebrafish housing rack, which is novel, affordable, and easy to construct. This system, when paired with our previously published housing tank design, allows for the housing of zebrafish at any stage of development. There are multiple levels of filtration and sterilization, which establish stable water conditions, allowing for the establishment of long-term usage of zebrafish for research and teaching. The system described below has been used by our laboratory to house zebrafish for 9 years, representing multiple generations of housed fish and hundreds of experiments.