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Grainger/Keller Frog Facilities The Grainger/Keller lab frog facility consists of five rooms, four housing frogs and a fifth containing a sink, counter, and common reagents and equipment, with a total floor space of about 400 square meters.
Tanks and Holding Capacity Each frog room contains between 24 and 36 fiberglass tanks (Red Ewald Inc.), each with a capacity of 120 liters, arranged in three tiers on both sides of the room. Support for the tanks is provided by a framework of epoxy/composite unistrut beams which are anchored to the floor and walls. Each tank is covered with a lid made from a piece of fiberglass window screen surrounded by a plastic frame. Illumination is provided by full-spectrum fluorescent bulbs (Philips F40AX50/ 40 watts) in moisture-tight plastic fixtures mounted above each tank. The light/dark cycle is controlled independently for each room using standard lawn sprinkler-type timers (Tork) located in the common room. Water System and Temperature Control
Water for the frog facility comes from a well located on adjacent university property. It is stored in a holding tank (Red Ewald Inc.) which is chilled to 13ºC. Hot water, heated to a maximum of 46ºC, is supplied on demand by an electric heating unit (Keltech) located downstream of the holding tank. Hot and chilled water lines run into each room, where the water is mixed using a standard shower-type mixing valve (Leonard) to obtain the desired temperature. Water pH and temperature are monitored by electronic sensors (pH- Signet, temp.- Omega) located downstream of the mixing valve. If the pH or temperature of the water flowing into a given room departs from a preset range an alarm (Omega) audible within the frog facility is triggered and a central, university-wide monitoring system is notified. The water heating and monitoring system was installed and is maintained by Hydro (Durham, NC). Each tank is supplied with water inflow and drainage through PVC pipes anchored to the unistrut framework and each tank can be filled and drained independently. Room air temperature is controlled mainly by the building-wide air system, however each room is equipped with an auxilliary heating/cooling air unit (Trane). We routinely set the room air temperature 1 - 2ºC higher than the desired water temperature to offset the effects of evaporative cooling in the tanks.
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