Fish and aquaria

The zebrafish facility is housed in the Huygens building of the Faculty of Science. For more than 40 years the department of Animal Ecology and Physiology has owned lab aquaria. We started working with zebrafish in 2007 and today, the Radboud zebrafish facility provides high-quality zebrafish husbandry in several modern housing systems and currently holds over 5000 fish, including different wildtype strains, visually detectable transgenic reporter lines and mutants with loss- and gain-of-function phenotypes.

Zebrafish husbandry and everything that comes with it, is daily routine for our professional staff. Our fish are housed in recirculating systems that provide automatic water circulation, biological filtration and UV-C treatment. All systems are equipped with automated monitoring and control units that measure water quality parameters such as pH, conductivity, and temperature. In addition, technical parameters are continuously safeguarded, such as pump functioning and water levels and flow. This ensures optimal, standardized environmental conditions for the fish.

Embryos and larvae are kept in incubators under controlled temperature and light/dark cycles. We use user-friendly software to manage our zebrafish stocks, to record water quality parameters, keep up breeding programs and daily health inspections. We have two fully trained animal caretakers responsible for fish husbandry, breeding and to build customized experimental setups.

Our modern facility is a place where specialists can work with all the necessary and specific knowledge and expertise at hand, to ensure successful experimentation.