A household member has demanded that I set up an aquarium on a kitchen island countertop. This will probably be 20-40 gallons, glass (tired of acrylic scratches), and contain freshwater community fish. The aquarium will be viewable from four sides. Without drilling through granite, it would be impossible to have any filtration underneath. I want to minimize equipment hanging off the sides and it would also be nice, for leak-proofing, to minimize the extent to which water travels outside of the area covered by the tank.
It would be nice to have the following:
- excellent mechanical filtration, like the best canister filters
- reasonable biological filtration (I’ve been told that almost any water movement and some gravel is sufficient to keep nitrifying bacteria alive)
- light for fish viewing; need not be bright enough for growing plants
- heater sufficient to keep the temperature at 76 or 78 for tropical fish
- UV sterilizer to control algae and disease
- hood to minimize evaporation and chance of a fish jumping out
- mounting for a decent autofeeder, e.g., the Eheim
The Marineland Eclipse hoods are the closest thing with which I’m familiar. They incorporate a light, mediocre mechanical filtration, and superb biological filtration. You end up sticking a heater into the tank (ugly and one extra cord) and having to live without UV sterilizer or autofeeder. Eclipse was popular during the Clinton Administration. Is there anything newer and more complete?
Note that it is conceivable that I could sacrifice one of the short edges of the tank and hang something there, but I very much want to avoid hanging anything front or back.
Update: Since nobody seems to make the product that I need, I wrote up a design for an aquarium hood incorporating LED lights, filter, heater, UV sterilizer, and automatic fish feeder.]
How about a hose or two leading down the side to the cabinet underneath?
Have you checked out the open-top AMA stuff?
See the examples in the bottom third of the page below.
http://www.adana-usa.com/index.php?main_page=afa_portfolio
As a visually oriented person, thinking of this aquarium as living sculpture, with many possible variations on the theme, and numerous conversational perks around the kitchen island counter over time — what if you did drill through the granite …
How about no hoses, no pumps, no aerators, no heaters?
It may shock people to learn that chimps only wear diapers on TV, not in the wild.
Set up as large a tank as will fit on your counter and get a glass cover. Put a directional spotlight on the ceiling if want your fish to be abnormally lit up and you think they will enjoy the feeling of being constantly interrogated, otherwise sunlight will do.
Create a biosphere in the tank. Green plants, snails, daphnia, etc. Avoid the temptation to stock the tank with seven 15″ long snakeheads. (you know you want to, but I know they’ll just end up in a local pond…) Instead, try some non-freaked out guppies and other small fish and maybe a bottom feeder.
I used to breed cichlids. I used to have a lot of tanks. Guess what? I hate the sound of pumps and filters and aerators, and worrying about temperature drops due to power outages (yes, two in Cambridge just last week) and feeding the fish during vacations.
Did I mention I hate the sound? Fish can be very relaxing to watch, but try this the next time you see a nice aquarium: Unplug it. Notice the relaxed sensation that washes over your body and how your lips silently form the words, “Hey, my headache just went away…”
This also works outside. I dug a tiny pond (40″x24″-that’s inches for you Spinal Tap fans) in our back yard this summer with my five-year old son. Lined it with black plastic painters drop cloth, ringed it with bricks, no pumps or anything else. By chance, it turned out looking great, so my Martha Stewart-ish wife didn’t take an axe to me. Two hours of fun work with my son. We planted it with three floating water hyacinths, some sprigs of other water plants, three guppies, six feeder runt goldfish and a betta. In a few short months the hyacinths turned into 15 plants and covered the pond and also bloomed with purple flowers. The 29¢ runt goldfish turned into beautiful four-inch goldfish, the guppies had 15 babies and then, the betta and three goldfish were eaten by raccoons. Cycle of Life, baby. (I had warned my son that might happen.) It was a great experience for my son and for me. We fed them in the morning, sometimes in the evening, not at all when we went to San Francisco or on other trips. No worries.
The water was always clear because I never attempted to shelter a dolphin in the pond or try to create fish fois gras by seeing how much food I could stuff into them.
Anyway, I say try a tank without wires and tubes, I think you will actually find it more engaging and more joyful, without all the hassle that the typical Koyaanisqatsi tanks engenders.
Wow Philip! Thanks for sharing that link. I didn’t realize one could craft such breathtaking landscapes inside an aquarium.
Fortunately for me, these guys have a store close to where I live (San Francisco), so I am going there next week to check them out.
One question: How maintenance intensive are these ‘underwater landscape’ aquariums? In terms of both money, time, and expertise needed. I mean no point purchasing these if the plants die easily and/or need several hundred dollars + several hours to maintain.
Thanks!
-Ritesh
Ritesh: Amano is famous worldwide for his planted aquaria and has published three books on the subject (at least). All of his designs require CO2 injection. How much maintenance? No more than the average 1-acre Japanese garden…
The closest tank I am aware of for a “clean install” on your granite top is a biorb http://www.biorbfishtanks.com/. It fails your requirements on material (acrylic), size (biggest 16 gal), and UV sterilization. I would consider building a top capable of concealing all your hardware but all that electrical equip on top of water would make me nervous and trying to access the top to clean, feed, etc. would be challenging. If I was doing the same thing I would actually build a 1 foot stand with the tank on top using a conventional overflow system which would likely only require a relatively small view obstruction in a corner of the tank. I would want to consider the height of the island though and figure out how elevated the tank would be.
I agree with not ruining a granite top with a couple drilled holes which then still leaves you with trying to conceal the hardware in bookshelves or under the sink.
That site’s tanks are a breathtaking accomplishment. Bonsai gardens submerged in frozen blocks of distilled water, with supersaturated colors stolen from the landscapes of Chinese restaurant plastic wall calendars.
Its fish are like people in a watercolor by Adolf Hitler, inconsequential anonymous absent, trapped in an architectural coldness that suggests an intellectualized rejection of emotion and spontaneity, barely masking the overbearing assertion of the superiority of its creator.
With its busty C02 injections and spray-on tan, the harder it tries to convince us (and itself) that it is beautiful, the more we are reminded of the essential emptiness at its core.
The post-modern robot that buys this tank can press his cold metal head to the glass, as his full-spectrum vision travels deep and faraway into its landscape searching toward kinship, and feel something impalpable, inexpressible..sublime…the feeling evoked by the awareness of his own inability to feel.
I say buy two.
I have undergravel filters in my aquariums (15- and 20- gallon). I seldom run them. Lee is the best brand I have found.
I never use chemicals in my aquarium. I use water filtered by Brita water filter pitchers. I change about 25% of the water monthly, using a siphon-type gravel cleaner (large tube on one end, narrower clear hose on the other end).
I do not worry about sterilizing the water. For lighting, I put Kitchen/Bath warm white fluorescent tubes in the hood. The more expensive, so-called natural lighting tubes they sell in pet stores make the tank look ugly and UNnatural.
I do not worry about tank heaters, as I do not plan on keeping my house cold (or warm) enough to do harm to the fish. Water conditions are more important than temperature.
My fish live a long life using these methods. I have friends who have spent hundreds of dollars on filtration, medication, and expensive fish that end up dying.
For food, the fish I have seem to like the Wardley brand the best. It is one of the cheapest, but they eat it much faster than more expensive, famous brands. Freeze-dried tubifex worms and freeze-dried bloodworms…they also like occasionally. Be careful with freeze-dried foods: if the fish get too big a chunk of it all at once, it can swell up and kill them; better to soak it for a minute or so to reconstitute it before feeding.
It is hard to find people in the pet stores who know much about how to take care of tropical fish. Just get a good book: Exotic Aquarium Fishes (“The Innes Book”) by William T. Innes (old but good). Herbert Axelrod has good books too. Do not be too concerned by seemingly outdated books…I honestly do not think that any newer books are any better than their. In my experience, my own common sense and experience is the best guide for me.
I never use any test kits for water quality and conditions. And especially I do not trust the opinion of the pet stores for this. Just add water that you consider safe for drinking – and, again, no chemicals. And no artificially softened water.
When you go to buy fish, look at the conditions of the tanks in the store and note how many fish are dying. If they are dying in the store, they will die at your house. But remember, the tank does not have to look pristine to be healthy for the fish.
Fish that have worked especially well for me and lived a long time: Gold Barbs, White Clouds, Corydoras Catfish, Gold Dojo.
More thoughts: I often do not turn the light on the aquarium hood. The fish do not seem to care at all.
The fish that I previously mentioned get along well with all other fish and with themselves; they do not seem disposed to eat each other.
An aquarium that gets a moderate amount of light (artificial or natural) my develop some algae. It will not hurt the fish. Clean it off with a soft toothbrush or soft plastic cleaning pad. Do not let gravel get between the cleaning item and the glass.
My mom has a cylindrical fish tank inside a glass laboratory canister she bought at a university surplus store. It is a very sturdy, solid-molded cylindrical glass tank, something like http://www.capitolscientific.com/estylez_item.aspx?item=J1020-7 , about a foot in diameter and 2.5ft high.
It is an awesome shape for a tank. She has a submersible filter and a heater in it; these are somewhat ugly but have the advantage that the only thing leading out of the tank is a pair of small black wires. The downside is that I don’t think there is much water circulation at the bottom of the tank.
It would be interesting to use under-gravel filtration in something like this, with either a drainage hole drilled in the tank bottom or a return line going up and then down a side of the tank. I think that would make it possible to create a really beautiful, easy-to-view cylindrical tank. I think a good general layout would be a tall piece of wood in the center, with some plants attached and some shelter for fish, along with some low-maintenance fish like neon tetras or guppies, and number of large snails because scraping algae off of a cylindrical surface is a huge pain.
Let me know if you want a hand assembling this… I’d love to help craft this sort of thing!
And more: Please note that although I do not often run the undergravel filters, I still recommend them. They prevent a dead zone in the bottom of your aquarium (there will be open water beneath them), enabling a more aerobic environment. I usully run the undergravel filter while I change the water and when I clean the glass (usually I will do all 3 at once). Do run the undergravel filter for 2 or 3 days straight after adding the gravel for the first time – and before adding fish. Only buy a few fish at a time. And do not buy too many fish!
Shimon: Thanks for the idea. I don’t like tanks with curved panels because they distort one’s view of the fish. They are kind of cool centerpieces for the room but when one wants to get close and see a particular fish it is annoying.
Just enter fake aquarium at Amazon.
Or, three or four LCD displays arranged facing out. Connect a cheap DVD player in the middle, and play something from the Monterrey aquarium. Only have to wipe the dust off now and again.
Someone earlier posted about the biorb aquarium – http://www.everythingbiorb.com – as one possibility for your tank, they have a 16 gallon size with led lighting, a fish feeder can be attached to the top, the filtration isn’t amazing though and doesn’t have a uv sterilizer.
Another alternative is the fluval edge aquarium, it is smaller than you want, but it does have viewing from all sides, including the top and the filtration is better than the biorb- you can see one here, they are actually pretty cool, I have one and like it a lot
http://www.sevenseasaquariums.com/aquariumstore/index.php/fluval-edge-aquariums-and-accessories.html