An inexpensive, efficient method for regular egg collection from zebrafish in a recirculating system

Abstract Zebrafish in our laboratory are usually bred by removing the fish from the recirculating aquatic system and placing them into 1–2 L spawning tanks. These spawning tanks consist of a bottom reservoir, a lid, and an insert that fits in closely into the bottom reservoir. When the fish breed, the eggs fall through holes of the insert and into the reservoir, thus preventing them from being cannibalized. Because fish in these spawning tanks are not fed and do not get fresh water, they are bred only once a week. During a period where we had high demand for embryos, we instead tried breeding the fish for multiple consecutive days on the recirculating system. Fish were placed into the spawning insert as usual, but the insert was placed into the home tank instead of into the bottom reservoir. We found that there was no significant difference in the number of fertilized eggs produced between the spawning tank and home tank breeding methods. Further, the fish in the home tanks regularly produced fertile embr...