Tubing
Tubing is an essential element of ZAF. Indeed its delivering food to the tanks and must be assemble with precaution. Here we will provide general consideration and advices on the tubing and then give you more details instruction to constitute the tubing splitter panel.
We used two main 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 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 to feeding pumps. 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 get an homogeneous food distribution among your tanks.
They are the hand 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 tank but with ZAF all is about modularity. If the user wants they can try a panel with 12 outputs --> tanks! THe Panel is made of polycarbonate plastic sheet with divider fixed using tube holder suction clips. We used two types of Y divider the type 1 for the first coupling and the type 2 for the output connections. The middle T connector are from this kit.
All together it is very easy to assembled by following the indication on the next figure. On the right it is a picture of one of the panel inside our fish facility. To then fastened the panel we used velcro .
Remember like every tubes in the setup, ALL the output tubes must have the same length
