Water Maze

Water Maze Pools

Rigid or folding: Polypropylene, HDPE, coated steel or foldable PVC . Seamless and non-toxic. Static or lockable high strength castors. Bottom or edge drain. Your choice of sizes. Pool heaters available. Radial Arm, T, Y and other mazes are also available.

HVS Image water maze pools are made to suit your particular needs, usually to standard Morris water maze requirements and optimized for video tracking, but can be any diameter and depth you require. Usual colors are white, black or blue. These are made to order and shipped to your institution.

The standard water depth for Morris water maze is 30 cm, with 30 cm of additional pool height above the water surface, so unless otherwise requested your pool will be 60 cm deep.

Pools are typically 180 cm diameter for rats, 120 cm for mice. Other diameters can be supplied if required, to suit your lab space or other requirements.

Pools are typically white for dark or hooded animals, or black for white animals, to provide good contrast, which is important for video tracking. Also important for tracking is the absence of anything visible within the pool, to make it quick and easy to set up reliable tracking.

The absence of anything visible inside the pool is also important to ensure that there are no visual cues present in the pool, to ensure that only the external cues are visible to the animal.

Low pools can result in back injury for the experimenter, so HVS Image pools are designed to be ergonomic, with a stand bringing the water surface to a height that is practical for the experimenter to reach without excessive bending, but without the pool side being too high to reach over.

We also take into account your ceiling height, as a very low ceiling may make a slightly lower pool more practical. The size of doorways the pool has to pass through to reach your lab is also checked to ensure that your pool will fit!

A plastic pool with a separate stand may suit you best if you need to move the pool through doorways that are smaller than the pool diameter.

Pools are robust and can be designed to withstand over-filling, with each castor able to bear a heavy load so as to withstand uneven load on the pool, e.g. people leaning or sitting on the edge of the pool. The images above are for illustration only – please contact us about your own requirements.

If assessing other pools be sure to compare with the above features to check for anything that could invalidate your experiments, damage your scientists or cause your laboratory liability. For example pressed steel pools may have visual cues, as they may have a seam that shows inside the pool, or reflections on an uncoated shiny inner pool surface, and they can easily get dented with the dents then acting as visual cues.

Our pools can be delivered worldwide.

Turnkey Tracking and Analysis Systems

Include pre-loading and testing of whole system including accessory kit provided. Typically i5 8GB RAM branded all-in-one computer such as Lenovo, typically with touch screen. Exact models may vary as new models become available.

HVS Image Accessory Kit

Includes:

• Large area CCD USB 2.0/3.0 camera with internal filters for visible, IR use or both and dual 1/4-20 UNC mount hardpoints.
• C/C-S Lenses for different set-ups from 2.1mm ultra wide angle to standard and long focal depending on your needs.
• 30 foot (10M) boosted USB 2.0 extension cable for camera.
• Ceiling mount with pedestal and universal joint and 1/4-20 UNC threads for camera.
• Long range wireless start/stop device.

Shipping is also included.

Water Maze Platforms