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.
If there is one thing we may or may not be known for here at OhGizmo, it’s posts about fish tanks. Fish tanks like this one, this one, this one, and especially this one. Since it’s Christmas, I just thought I’d remind you that fish also like to celebrate the holidays, and all it takes to get them into the spirit of things is a visit from Santa:
This conical fish tank in the lobby of a restaurant in Beijing is stuffed to the brim with goldfish. The tank is restocked at the top, and then the fish end up not quite alive at the bottom, which takes them, unfortunately, a mere six days. No word on what happens to them after that, but feel free to insert a tasteless sushi joke here.
It’s easy to just slap a few Star Wars stickers on any old item and sell it as an officially branded product, but recently it seems like Lucasfilm has been going beyond the call of duty when it comes to licensing out the Star Wars brand. This 1 3/4-gallon R2-D2 aquarium is a good example. Just sticking a clear tank inside a plastic R2 replica isn’t that noteworthy, but turning his radar eye into an eyepiece for a built-in periscope that allows you to see the underwater inhabitants up close will guarantee this thing ends up under plenty of trees this Christmas.
R2-D2’s domed head will even swivel at any voice command, and includes overhead LED tank lights that randomly cycle between red, blue, and green. Not surprisingly the R2-D2 aquarium is available from Hammacher Schlemmer for a reasonable $129.95.
Fish tanks, by definition, are restrictive, and don’t give fish the freedom to explore the upper atmosphere. It’s a real problem, especially if you have a flying fish, like this one. Much like the Festo Air_ray, this fish is most likely filled with helium and controlled by servo-powered fins. There aren’t many more details, but it seems to have been an entry in a German airship regatta.
Click here for a video of the longest recorded flight of a real flying fish.
So maybe you’ve taught your fish all kinds of neat tricks. That’s great. But what about some old fashioned book learning? I mean, how’s your fish going to get a job without some smarts? This globe aquarium should do the trick, since Mr. Fishy will have absolutely nothing better to do than study the geography of the world that’s been stenciled onto his house, day and night (since it glows in the dark thanks to an LED lamp).
You might think that it would be a problem not to have a north pole when learning global geography. Not so, since in fact the Earth also has big hole up there, just like this fish tank. Where does the hole go? Why, inside the Earth, of course. It’s hollow in there. With people in it. The Garden of Eden is down there, apparently. And a monorail. You can go there, if you like… Just join the expedition.
Be sure not to forget your fish tank. You know, in case you get lost and need a map back to the surface. It’s $49.95.
I’m perfectly happy to have a bathroom devoid of life. But I suppose it can get lonely in there, at times… All of that cold, sterile linoleum and tile. I guess then it could possibly make a tiny little bit of sense to stuff all your bathroom fixtures full of fish, maybe. I mean, a lot of your bathroom fixtures are submerged to some extent much of the time anyway, right? So why not let a bunch of fish enjoy it? Doesn’t that sort of make sense?
Or maybe it’s just weird.
Either way, people have done it, and if you want to, you can completely fishify your water closet with integrated fish tanks in your sink, bathtub, and toilet.
The Moody Aquarium Sink comes with a sand bed and built-in lighting and filtration to keep your fish happy and healthy. The soap dishes on either side lift out to give you access to the tank. Cost: $4700.
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