Ball valve

Description

A ball valve is a shut-off valve in a water line. None of the reference works in this catalog describe it for aquariums, but fish facilities use it in their plumbing, and three papers show the jobs it does there. The first is switching part of a system in or out. A 2015 case study of a recirculating fish hatchery added a planted constructed wetland to the water loop, and a ball valve at the height of the inlet to the wetland enabled operation of the system with or without it, so there was no need for additional pumps or supplemental power. The hatchery's source of fresh water was a borehole. The second is draining. A 2011 zebrafish breeding vessel is a 100 L cylindrical acrylic tank whose bottom is a funnel with a 2.54 cm wide ball valve attached to the apex, and embryos are collected by opening the ball valve at the bottom of the chamber and draining the water into a sieve. The third is tying new equipment into an existing supply. SideRack, a 2014 add-on shelf for commercial zebrafish racks, takes its water from the rack's own system through a 1 inch ball valve, and its authors note that connection of the ball valve to the main system water supply is likely to vary between different facilities. Their parts list names the part as a 1-in PVC Sch 40 female in-line ball valve, followed by a short fragment of flexible PVC pipe. All three are laboratory or hatchery systems, not home tanks. None of them gives a flow figure or a valve size for an aquarium, so this page gives neither.

Sources

• pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4390338/
• pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3126846/
• pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3992002/

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