Public Higher Education Bulletin

Aquaneering will refurbishment, relocation, and expansion of existing zebrafish aquatic housing in the Department of Pharmacology.

In 2013 Pharmacology had acquired Aquaneering's water and filtration system from Northwestern University Medical consisting of : 5 single-sided shelf racks with central Filtration system. monitoring system and alarm system along with fifty "Crossing" tanks. This system original cost to Northwestern was $ 77,919. The 2013 Aquaneering system relocation to UIC cost $ 14, 145. Since then UIC's Pharmacology has invested another $ 50k in parts and ongoing servicing.

The requested purchase will culminate after a four month part by part inspection period that Pharmacology and Aquaneering conducted. That inspection period determined what can still be used, and what needs to be repaired or replaced. As Aquaneering built the original system, they are the only vendor that could provide this service.

In summary, for less than the cost of new system, we are actually increasing our housing capacity by ~5000 adult animals, increasing the throughput of experiments performed by the lab. The renovation and expansion will include additional housing for approximately 15,000 adult zebrafish, as well as dedicated quarantine racks for importing outside zebrafish lines to UIC.

The University has determined that this purchase is only economically available from this source because the items are required for research and no other source is able to meet the researcher's documented needs.