Tubing
Tubing is an essential element of ZAF. Indeed it is the essential element to deliver food to the tanks and must be assemble with precaution. Here we provide general considerations and advices on the tubing for your own ZAF and give more details instruction to constitute the tubing splitter panel.
We used two types of tubes, type 1 for the connection of the pumps valve and food flask inside ZAF and another type 2 to hook up the tanks and the splitter panel.
In the next scheme you will see how to connect the different pumps/valve together and what type of tubing you need to use.
Keep in mind to have the same tubes length for each subtype of connection, i.e the tubes going out of the food flask to bring the food to the two feeding pumps must be the same, and it is the case for every downstream connection. It is very important to obtain a homogeneous food distribution among your tanks.
They are the "hands" of your robot to distribute the food to each tanks. With the separator panel one pump can deliver the food to eight tanks. We decided to limit our panel to eight tanks but with ZAF all is about modularity. If the you want, you can try a panel with 12 outputs --> tanks! The panel support is made of polycarbonate plastic sheet with divider fixed using tube holder suction clips. We used two Y dividers, the type 1 for the first coupling and then the type 2 for the output connections. The middle T connector are from this kit.
All together it is very easy to assembled following the indications on the next figure left panel. On the right it is a picture of the panel inside we build in for our facility. Finally then fastened the panel we used velcro .
Remember each tubes in the setup, must have the same length
