If you’ve ever wanted to destroy an ichthyophobia convention, now is your big chance. This is the Aqua Bomb, a six and a half foot tall self contained fish tank manufactured using components from an actual Mark 84 “Hammer” 2,000 pound bomb. The MK-84 is capable of making a crater 50 foot wide 40 foot deep in the surface of your choice, after penetrating 11 feet of concrete. No word on how much the fish will improve the effectiveness of this weapon, but is probably depends on the payload, which in this case (according to the resident OhGizmo marine biologist) consists of a Clown Triggerfish and a juvenile Blue Tang that are most likely fake. The pump, filter, and lighting are all built in, and the Aqua Bomb is available in “seven beautiful powder-coated colors” for just shy of $4,000.
We’re not really a big pop sci-fi / fantasy blog here at OhGizmo, but I thought that you guys might (might) be interested in some of the stuff that went on at WonderCon here in San Francisco over the weekend. I sat in on a Q&A session with Richard Hatch (Tom Zarek in the new Battlestar Galactica), went to panels about Wall-E and the new X-Files movie, and wandered around the exhibit hall for a while. Even if you’re not into the genre, at least click through for an adorable picture of a zombie chewing on a teddy bear at the end of the article. Read the rest of this entry »
Oops. It’s kinda Saturday, isn’t it? Forgive me, fanatical fans of Fishtank Friday, for foregoing your frequent fishy fun. I blame GDC. Let’s all just pretend that today is still Friday, or if you prefer, this can be the first (but almost certainly not the last) Fishtank Saturday. On with it!
Ever wanted to feel like a fish? Yeah, you can always go swimming or diving or something, but you’re still in a foreign environment. How can you be underwater without being underwater? Simple: just be under (space) water. This people tank can be found at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. The water is held up by a giant sheet of plexiglass, and you can walk around underneath, under the water. The ladder provides a nice touch, too. A picture from the top of the pool, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Once again, I find myself jealous of fish. Who ever thought that Fishtank Fridays would turn out to be so depressing for us humans and our silly little square houses? These fish live amidst beautiful natural landscapes created from real aquatic flora. Not only do the fish get to pretend they’re flying, they get to pretend that they’re flying above the ground. And they’re fish. It boggles the mind.
As you might expect, one of these setups isn’t especially easy to maintain. To keep the plants healthy, you need to add CO2 to the tank, along with fertilizer. You’ll also need grow lights and a serious filtration system. For more information on how it all works, click here. Two more spectacular pictures after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
If you need to call Batman, you use one of these. If you need to call Aquaman, I guess you’ll have to travel to Lyon, France, and find some way to get into this phone booth, which is full of fish. It was designed by Benedetto Bufalino as part of the Lyon Light Festival, and is located right about here. The designers describe it thusly:
“With the advent of the mobile telephone, telephone booths lie unused. We rediscover this glass cage transformed into an aquarium, full of exotically coloured fish; an invitation to escape and travel.”
Oh, and FYI, if you do need to contact Aquaman, apparently the way to do it is by putting a message in a bottle and chucking it into the ocean in the hopes that some sort of crab-thing will pick it up and deliver it to his secret lair inside an ancient Atlantean temple.
If your goldfish are futurists (or fans of SimCity 2000), they’d probably get a kick fin out of the Silverfish aquarium, designed by Octopus Studios. From the perspective of a fish, it’s an arcology, which is a huge habitat designed to deal with high population densities. I suppose you could argue that just having a big tank full of water allows for higher density than six interconnected habitats, but that would be ignoring the privacy needs of your aquatic pals. And it would be way boring. The tank holds 60 gallons and is completely self contained, coming with everything necessary to keep tropical freshwater fish healthy and happy. Each one is custom made and will cost you $3400 excluding only fish and gravel.
If you’re as big of a Star Trek: TNG fan as I am, you’ll immediately recognize this dome aquarium from Captain Picard’s ready room aboard the Enterprise-D. The aquarium was home to Livingston the fish, one of only four recurring pets in the Star Trek franchise. In every episode except one, or perhaps technically two, Livingston was played by a red lionfish, which are a lovely, albeit venomous, sort of tropical fish that you can find living on coral reefs all over the world.
The tank itself is made of acrylic, with a 20″ dome and a 40 gallon capacity. It’ll set you back nearly $1k including the stand and self-contained casing.
Bonus geek points to anyone who knows about the other Star Trek recurring pets and the episodes in which Livingston the fish was not himself.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
As far as I know, this is the first fishtank in which plankton are given a computer interface. You might be wondering just what the heck plankton could possibly want with a computer, but besides surfing the web, it turns out that these little daphnia are accomplished artists, dancers, and musicians. With the proper digital tools, anyway.
The actual fishtank is underneath a microscope. An array of LEDs responds to the movement of the daphnia (effectively, the daphnia controls the LEDs), turning off when the animal gets close to one of the sides of the tank. The position of the daphnia is projected live into a full size fishtank, and then surrounded by a cloud of digital plankton. And although it doesn’t seem to be included in the video, there’s also sound which the daphnia controls depending on the direction in which it swims.
Just imagine what it must be like for this lucky little daphnia… One minute, it’s living in pond scum, and the next, it’s controlling a computer. If it had a brain, it would probably be pretty excited. Oh well.
The Radisson SAS Hotel in Berlin is (for some reason) home to the largest cylindrical fishtank in the world. The AquaDom is 25 meters high (that’s over 80 feet), contains 1 million liters (260,000 gallons) of salt water, and is home to 2,500 fish (56 species in all). There’s also a glass elevator that goes up the middle if you want to swim with the fishies without getting wet. Two full time divers are tasked with keeping the residents healthy and happy, which might sound like a fun job, but I bet they have to keep the glass clean as well. In addition to being the largest cylindrical fishtank, the AquaDom is also the largest acrylic glass cylinder in the world, with a diameter of 11 meters. The whole thing cost nearly 13 million euros back in 2003, but you can book a fishtank-view room in the hotel for considerably less than that (about 260 euros on a weekend). More pics after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
By Evan Ackerman
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