Changing water and filters becomes a thing of the past with this aquarium, thanks to a floating garden that creates a miniature mostly-closed ecosystem along with the fish living in the tank below. Tank water, which inevitably has a bunch of fish poo in it, gets pumped up to the floating garden, where it passes through a layer of sand containing bacteria that convert the poo into nitrates. Then, the nitrate water flows into the plants, and they absorb the nitrates as fertilizer. Finally, the clean water gets send back into the tank to keep the fish happy.
It’s a very neat and tidy system, and it not only makes your aquarium more interesting, but it makes it easier to manage as well. The design comes from Benjamin Graindorge and Duende Studio, and will be available for purchase early next year.
I suppose there is something relaxing about watching fish meander around their fake little worlds, which is probably why you find fish tanks in doctor’s and dentist’s offices and other places where pain and discomfort are reliably imminent. But said fish, as relaxing as they may appear, don’t actually do much to relieve stress. The fish who live underneath the HydroGlass hydrotherapy table don’t do much to relieve stress either, but at least they’re attached to something that does. The table comes with a heated water mattress and seven overhead shower heads for Vichy shower treatments. Now, I don’t know what a Vichy shower treatment is… I’d tell you what I think (based on hazy memories of high school history), but I wouldn’t want to Godwin my own post.
There’s no price listed, but it’s undoubtedly cheaper to just go get yourself some regular hydrotherapy somewhere, and bring along a goldfish bowl to put under the table.
Normally, the fish tanks we write about are isolated things, objects that you can point to and say, “hey look, there’s a fish tank.” Canon’s mixed reality aquarium, on the other hand, makes everywhere a fish tank. With the aid of a VR headset, different species of fish and other marine life are projected into your surroundings, and it appears as though the fish actually interact with your environment, avoiding (or running into) objects. Canon isn’t sure whether or not they’re going to try and make a product out of this, but just try and imagine putting on a pair of glasses and spending the entire day wandering around your own virtual under water world. It would be totally awesome, at least until you get hit by a bus while trying to avoid being eaten by a virtual shark.
This is what happens after years spent searching for good Fish Tank Friday material… It’s like your brain is half full of water, and there’s a little blue fishy swimming around where your eyeballs used to be. This is a piece of functional artwork by Nicola L., and as far as I can tell, it’s not for sale. But, if you like the idea of furniture shaped like heads, there are some limited edition pieces available on her website.
The biOrb SpyOrb is a generally unremarkable spherical eight gallon fish tank of the self-contained variety, meaning that besides changing filters every once in a while you don’t really have to do much. What makes it kinda neat are some of the accessories, like the biOrb Timer ($37) which will flash its LEDs at you to remind you when it’s time to do feed your fish or do maintenance on the tank.
You can also get a special little LED lighting unit ($82) that cycles through different colors and brightnesses depending on what time of day it is. In the morning, “sunrise” lighting fades gradually into normal white light, followed in the evening by “sunset” lighting which turns into soft blue moonlight at night. It’s supposed to look nice, but more importantly, it replicates a natural light cycle which should help keep your fish blissfully happy and unaffected by the fact that they’re spending their lives in an eight gallon ball.
The biOrb SpyOrb is available now in ice white, piano black, or silver for $195.
Yesterday, we posted an article about LaserPup, a DIY remote controlled dog insane-o-tron with an iPhone interface. The piece of hardware that makes it easy for your iPhone (i.e. web app) to control stuff in the real world is called the ioBridge, and now (inevitably) a guy named Pete has rigged it up to control his fish tank, as you can see in the video above.
The ioBridge is a really nifty little device. You can attach it to just about anything (servos, webcams, electronics, sensors) and then control it over the internet with just about anything. The ioBridge doesn’t just deal with the messiness of converting electronics signals into network signals, but it also handles all of the network compatibility and security back-end. It also includes a code-free widget designer to get the project up and running. Sounds easy, and the possibilities are infinite… And the introductory “beta” price of $88 for the base board means you can probably afford one of these just to experiment with. iPod Touch controlled airsoft target range, anyone?
This confused looking goldfish has a Chumby in its tank. You remember Chumby, right? It’s a little open source widget platform, with WiFi, a touch screen, some USB ports, and a squeeze sensor… It’s designed to become whatever you want it to become. And in this case, it’s become an interactive fish monitor.
The Chumby is attached to some hardware that sits in the fish bowl and measures water conditions to make sure your fish stays healthy. If you’re not going to be around, you can monitor your fish wirelessly with a webcam and have the Chumby dispense food and medication. But it gets better: the Chumby also senses vibrations and noises made by bubbles, and can send the information to other Chumbys in other fish tanks which will reproduce everything, in effect allowing fish to communicate with each other over the internet. And it’s about time, geez… My fish have been complaining about not having internet phone service for years now.
According to the resident OhGizmo marine biologist, the thing in the video above is what’s called a siphonophore. Although it looks like one single totally bizarre alien fish thing, it’s actually a colony of different individual invertebrate animals that live together as one single organism. Some of them sting, some of them glow, some of them digest, and some of them push it around and look all tentacley. Each part has become dependent on the other parts working together, making siphonophores a sort of weird hybrid between individuals and a single animal. That’s pretty cool, I guess, I just really hope I don’t ever find one crawling up out of my toilet.
Somehow, an intrepid reef shark on display at a resort in the Bahamas was able to escape her pen by jumping over an 18 inch wide, foot high wall. She landed on an adjacent waterslide (called “The Leap of Faith”) and made it all the way down to the bottom, presumably doing whatever the shark equivalent is of shouting “wheeee!” the whole time. Right before splashdown, one of those automatic thrill-ride cameras snapped the above picture.
Unfortunately, sharks and chlorinated water don’t mix very well, and although resort staff were able to rescue the shark from the pool and return her to her tank, she died shortly thereafter. Oh, and the resort wasn’t open at the time, so there was nobody else on the water slide… But if there had been, this would have taken the concept of “thrill ride” to a while new level.
Related Tags: Fish Tanks, Plants
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