Bonsai Tree Aquarium

Makoto Azuma creates stunning hybrids of nature and man-made systems....

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Crazy Aquarium Design

Loving this aquarium/art sculpture by Psalt Design...

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Britains Largest Home Aquarium

"Jack Heathcote has converted the cellar of his five-bedroom house into Britain’s biggest domestic aquarium.
The 37-year-old, who lives in the Carlton district of Nottingham, has created a private underwater world in the basement of his five-bedroom home, filled with exotic species usually only seen in such far-flung corners of the world as the Amazon and Congo.

Jack paid just £700 for the glass panels and £800 for the fibreglass lining, adding that the tank cost him £5,000 in total to build. He has also stuck to simple decoration in the tank, which includes large, smooth boulders along with the branches of a damson tree which he chopped in half.

The tank is an L-shape from front to back, meaning that the space immediately behind the bay window is 7ft deep, while the rest of the floor space is subdivided by a ledge that used to be the foundation for the window.

And the collection in the tank - which includes some valuable species - consists of two chainsaw doradids, three 2ft long Pacus, some Pangasius, a Red tail hybrid catfish, two alligator gars, eight enormous stingrays and two Fly River turtles.

They will soon be joined by two silver arowanas, which are more commonly found in the Amazon River Basin."

To be honest, I love the concept but surely he could have put more effort into decorating it with natural vegetation for the fish & turtles??

Info from Adriana Wong & Words/Pics [VIA]

Aquarium Phone Booth

Artists, Benoit Deseille and Benedetto Bufalino created a phonebooth aquarium as part of the Lyon Light Festival in France.....I hope the work stays and isn't damaged!

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Paludariums Are Cool

I have finally found a hobby that can incorporate my love for fishtanks and my mrs.' love for gardening...Paludariums! A paludarium is a type of vivarium that incorporates both terrestrial and aquatic elements. Paludaria usually consist of an enclosed container in which organisms specific to the biome being simulated are kept. Half-land, half-water; perfect!!

AGA 2010 Aquascaping Contest

Here are the results from the AGA Aquascaping Awards 2010

1st Place-

432 Litre: Michael G.W. Wong, North Point Hong Kong

2nd Place:

400 Litre: Pasquale Buonpane, Piedimonte Matese CE Italy

3rd Place:

412 Litre: Kam Wong, North Point Hong Kong

other tanks to note:

648 Litre: Yu-Lin Chen, Hsinchu City, Taiwan

870 Litre: Chow Wai Sun, Hong Kong - China

Aquatic Plant Layout Aquarium Competition 2008

I have to say that fishtank-keeping has become an extremely competitive hobby in the past couple years with the emphasis being more on the layout of your plants rather than how many species of fish you can cram in the tank. What we are then left with is hobbyists striving for perfection; crystal-clear waters, lush vegetation and a tank that never needs to be cleaned...
The following pics are from the Aquatic Plant Layout Competition 2008...a Hong Kong guy won!! Bless....(Click on pics to enlarge)

World ranking Number 1- Cheng Siu Wai, Hong Kong

World ranking Number 2- Yutaka Kanno, Japan

World ranking Number 3- Hsu Yung Lin

World ranking Number 4- Cliff Hui, Hong Kong

World ranking Number 5- Long Tran Hoang, Vietnam

World ranking Number 15- Peter Kirwan, Ireland (I like the mountain-effect)

Local River Concept

Local River is a home storage unit for fish and greens, designed by Matthieu Lehanneur.

The Locavores appeared in San Francisco in 2005 and define themselves as ‘a group of culinary adventurers who eat foods produced in a radius of 100 miles (160 km) around their city’. By doing so they aim to reduce impact on the environment inherent to the transport of foodstuffs, while ensuring their traceability.


Local River anticipates the growing influence of this group (the word ‘locavore’ made its first appearance in an American dictionary in 2007) by proposing a home storage unit for live freshwater fish combined with a mini vegetable patch. This DIY fish-farm-cum-kitchen-garden is based on the principle of aquaponics coupled with the exchange and interdependence of two living organisms - plants and fish.


The plants extract nutrients from the nitrate-rich dejecta of the fish. In doing so they act as a natural filter that purifies the water and maintains a vital balance for the eco-system in which the fish live. The same technique is used on large-scale pioneer aquaponics/fish-farms, which raise tilapia (a food fish from the Far East) and lettuce planted in trays floating on the surface of ponds.


Local River aims to replace the decorative ‘TV aquarium’ by an equally decorative but also functional ‘refrigerator-aquarium’. In this scenario, fish and greens cohabit for a short time in a home storage unit before being eaten by their keepers, the end-players in an exchange cycle within a controlled ecosystem.
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Kuroshio Sea Tank

Kuroshio Sea is Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium's main tank in Japan. It's actually the second largest aquarium in the world. It holds 7,500-cubic meters (1,981,290 gallons) of water and features the world's second largest acrylic glass panel, measuring 8.2 meters by 22.5 meters with a thickness of 60 centimeters. Whale sharks and manta rays are kept amongst many other fish species in the main tank.

(Allow the video to fully load before watching, so as to have the smoothest viewing experience possible)

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Takashi Amano Pt. 3

My aquascaping hero, Takashi Amano has a new site up now and I'd thought I'd share some of the aquarium shots with you. He is actually an excellent nature photographer, as well as being the world's most renowned aquascaper.





See my first post about him HERE and the second post HERE.

Dashboard Fishtank

Another crazy concoction...a fishtank in your car, as a dashboard...wtf??!

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Octopus Goes On Rampage At Aquarium

A classic animal tale: Otto the Octopus who is held prisoner at the Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany was caught causing a riot in his tank. Apparently, he was getting pissed off with the bright light shining into his tank and had worked out how to shoot a jet of water at the lights, causing them to short-circuit!


Not only that, but Otto was caught doing other violent acts: according to the Director of the aquarium, Elfriede Kummer,"Once we saw him juggling the hermit crabs in his tank, another time he threw stones against the glass damaging it. And from time to time he completely re-arranges his tank to make it suit his own taste better - much to the distress of his fellow tank inhabitants."
Good on him I say, you obviously never designed his tank well enough, you muppets! Get a pro aquascaper like me in there and I'll chill Otto out in a jiffy....


Another Dangerous Octopus

Original story from HERE. Thanks to Mysterious Al for the Heads-Up on this bizarre post!!

Fish Are Intelligent

I've been trying to tell people about this for years and now I finally have some proof!! Dr Dean Pomerleau has managed to train his beloved goldfish, Comet to perform a range of tasks using positive re-inforcement training.


Dr Pomerleau says: "We've used techniques that we've customised for pet fish, but are based on those used to train dolphins and other marine mammals. The basic idea is to reinforce successive, increasingly accurate approximations of a desired behaviour.


"In training an animal to press a lever, for example, simply turning toward the lever will be rewarded at first. Then, only turning and stepping toward it will be rewarded.


In training an animal to press a lever, for example, simply turning toward the lever will be rewarded at first. Then, only turning and stepping toward it will be rewarded.
With a little time and repetition, the animal will learn to perform the complete behaviour to receive the reward."

Bring on my new intelligent aquatic community fishtank.

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ADA Aquascape Contest 2005 Pics

I came across these amazing images taken from the 2005 ADA Aquascape contest top 6 entries. No Takashi Amano, but plenty more talent from the cream of the crop in Aquascaping.

World Ranking 6 Ryu Huei Yang, Korea

World Ranking 5 Vladimir Uzhik, Ukraine

World Ranking 4 Sham Kai Man, Hong Kong

World Ranking 3 Kazunori Mitsuda, Japan

World Ranking 2 Fumio Shiga, Japan

World Ranking 1 Chen De Quen, Taiwan

More incredible photos HERE.