Fishtank Friday: Fish Overpass

Fish Overpass

By Evan Ackerman

When commuting fish need to get from home to work, their options are generally somewhat limited in a captive environment. This fish pipeline connects two fish tanks over a respectable distance (looks to be several tens of feet), allowing fish to travel from one tank, up and over the floor of a coffee shop, into the other tank. According to some of the comments in the article, the coffee shop in question is the now defunct Liquid Potion Lounge in Evanston, IL. One observer says: “They would often go up the tubes, but they’d rarely make it all the way to the other fish tank. I remember it being days before I finally saw a fish make it all the way across. Looked really cool though.” So, how does it work? From what I can tell, air gets pumped out of the top of the pipeline, drawing water up out of the tanks until the pipeline is full. Vacuum pressure then keeps the water from draining out. More pics of fish in the pipeline, after the jump.

Fish Overpass

VIA [ thecontaminated.com ]

Anonymous

dont worry thegabe. i got cha.
Charlie

Who cleans the sucker?
Walter Cena

This fish tank is EROTIC
Anonymous

FREE THE FISH! FISH IS INNOCENT!
Anonymous

more sushi spots should have this as an added feature. Watching lobsters crawl around, crabs and other smaller fish… that would be great!
Anonymous

I do not know the mechanics but the idea is lovely. When you think about it, it allows the fish to fly over land. It might be different but as long as the fish are not hurt it should be fine. They adapt; its what they know; it becomes their norm. Puts into perspective humans moving from farms to cities or being introduced to a new culture. Normal = Strange + Time
ben

i love that normal=strange+time
Anonymous

your all fucked!
Anonymous

What’s brown and sticky????
Anonymous

A STICK
an entertained aristocratt

lol thank you all for your illuminating conversation!! it was hilarious and slightly pathetic to see the “smartest race on earth” wasting their time like this. I look forward to reading future posts on different threads, so keep it up, morons!!
Freddy

How do you keep those tubes clean?
Anonymous

get a better hobby ppl
Anonymous

what would the fish do?

this is a form of torture of the same magnitude and cruelty as waterboarding!

how can you all say that this isn’t cruel. you are all horrible horrible people with no morals! remember the romans thought that slavery and gladiators were not torture… but it was.

YOU ARE ALL IDIOTS!
ZilViA

come si può paragonare questa cosa con i gladiatori??i pesci non hanno il cervello…nn si rendono conto! e in + mi sembra solo un’idea diversa dal solito per attirare gente in un locale….e sinceramene ognuno ha la propria idea…non esiste nessun IDIOTAAA!!
http://www.agonalbreath.com Derelict

… but are the fish tasty?

D
Anonymous

learn how to speak english you idiot
http://none peter

I like it. It shows out of the box thinking and free thinking. It shows imagination past the confines of the guy that said, “That is cruel”. Obviously an inside the box thinker working on pure and immediate notions, and not thinking it through.
tamtam

Well i am a adimate fish lover i have 4 aquariums in my house plus 5 betta bowls and i think your tank is the coolest i understand that fish love to wonder and this will keep them busy considering what else do they have to do. i am very curious on the cost and upkeep. maybe one day i will have a community connected together. ha ha
http://izabael.com Isabeal

Why did they go out of business? Spent all their money on that thing instead of good coffee
Ryan

Very cool apparatus, alot of thought went into just how to support the thing properly…it’s a cool idea and I’m surprised if there aren’t larger scale versions of this somewhere, like giant hampster playgrounds but for fish…hahaha
Alex

Why there is not a knife-fan at the embouchure of the tube?
Bubba

Man, I’d like them there fish to be swimming right onto my skillet. Nothing like a little lemon-peppered bluegill to make my day. That there apparatus is awesome. Reminds me of a big ‘ole fish tank I done saw in Chattanooga. It were BIG! And if that were a bong that big, I wouldn’t be seeing fish… I’d being seeing some Whales! I wonder what would happen I you put prey-fish in one tank and predator fish in the other. Dang, I’m going to make something like this to connect my kids’ rooms together. Or maybe another trailer to mine. That would be sweet, And I don’t believe none of that there vacuum BS. It’s the government doing an anti-gravity experiment right under our noses. Ain’t too long till the UFO’s come and take us away.
Anonymous

how do they keep the water up there ?
Jackson Mehoff

man oil
Anonymous

this is badass. I wish I had the money or time to do this
George W. Bush

NO ITS CRUEL YOU IDIOTS!
http://www.winextra.com Bill Vincent

Best comment thread evar.

LOL, morons.

Cool invention, probably a bitch to keep clean unless the filtration is very good, and chems are used to prevent algae growth.
http://www.winextra.com Bill Vincent

@anonymous

Time would be the only constraint. Money-wise, the plastic (lexan or something) would not be all that expensive. Learning how to cut and pin/glue the plastic would only take a bit of googling and some practice. I’ve made a couple aquarium sumps and overflows with the same methods.
The concept itself is the truly amazing part of the whole thing.
http://bootslack.wordpress.com James D. Newman

Bob is my hero. I liked the cheesecake comment also, but Bob is my hero. More to the point – I am a big cat fan and am planning, when I get a house, on doing catwalks. Suspended train tracks have also long fascinated me — and now I have a third thing to add. You could interweave the fish tubes and the catwalks so that the cats (curious about the fish) get motivated to use them more. I am curious about the cleaning problems though — just a large aquarium can be a bear. What would you do, flush it with some kind of enzyme?
Silversun5

hahahah. amazing thread. and i agree, way way too cruel to provide more space for the fishes. beyond.
cabbagehats

whos gazman?
cabbagehats

oh. duh. hes at the top. sorry, missed that.
Jas

Damn that is awesome i want 1 what would be really cool is a fish tank in each room and connecting them all … but clean it would hella suck …. unless u made them really big that u could put scuba gear on and swim round
http://stumble Alan

EH -EH stop swearing it’s just the point of veiw the big fish is saying Hi lilly thats cool. do you want to hear me sing. ? yeh ok, if I was a carp-enter and you was me lady yeh Ha good eh yeo Derby
http://stumble Alan

another. OK. traveling around from tank to tank, some times I think it’s just a prank for I know I never be set free but it’s really good enough for me, just swimming I love it my friend i’m happy inside this tube without end.RRRR
http://stumble Tom

traveling around from tank to tank. some times I think it’s just a prank for I know I will not be set free but it is the nicest place for me. just swimming the word is my friend i’m traveling around this room without end. glub-glub good eh Derby again,
Anonymous

definitely not cruel. seriously! i wish i was a fish in that tank! haha!
Gizzard

OK. I love the idea but……. The reason that it probably took ages for a fish to swim across is that the fish would be subjected to considerable changes in pressure as it swam up the tube which would no doubt hurt it. Not that I’m against hurting fish, you understand. It was a tragic fish-related accident that killed half of my family. Let them suffer, the little scaly bastards. That’ll teach ‘em to mock me!
Todd

So this looks cool, but something urks me about it… It’s not that I think it’s cruel to fish…(remember PETA kills 98% of the animals it “saves”) plus they’re fish….seriously…

My complaint is physics. These “tubes” are ABOVE the two tanks. In order for the water to not push out the tanks and spill on the floor, it would need to be kept under pressure. In fact, the only way to get the water up there is to literally suck it up from the two tanks simultaneously while filling both with water. Literally PULL the water up to the top and cork it (must be kept air tight otherwise the tanks overflow till there is no water in the tubes). Something this size doesn’t look feasible.
SciKid

The laws of physics are in no way being bent or broken. It is true that “water finds its own level” but so long as no air can get in the top of the tube the water cannot fall down because there is nothing to replace it. This creates its own pressure. I do not think, however, that this was achieved by simply pumping air out of a one way valve on the top. There are many more simple ways of doing this that don’t require nearly as much suction.
eddiedog8

cool 8)
Abe

I love how one brief three-word comment decides the content of hundreds of posts that follow. IT IS CRUEL, YOU GUYS! SETTING UP THOSE IN THE CEILING FISH FOR ENTERTAINMENT?
j.

woah. first of, you guys are mean. “idiot, moron, ugly”. second of all, sitting around arguing about the cruelty value? small animals in small cages are there for our amusement and for the decoration value.
Anonymous

this would be a fucking awesome bong!
tunca

are the tanks at the both end of the tube sealed to prevent water leaking?
Anonymous

looks cool but how would you clean it when it gets full of algae? would like to see it 6 months down the line. haha
peerpressure

Hahahahahahahahahahhahaha I’m from Britain and I can’t believe what I’m reading here, are you lot sat in a trailer-park somewhere in Alibami passing round THE brain-cell while you take turns with the crayon?????? Hahahahahahahahahah
jerry

well i will tell you what. it would make a good bong and it is obviously the work of somebody who has a lot of either time on his hands or brains in his head….or maybe even both. and if so he’s my first pick for dodge ball….lol
GAZMANS A RETARDS A RETARD

UR A RETARD GAZMANS A RETARD A RETARD

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Fishtank Friday: Fish Overpass