You would think, with all the water I have had on the floor in the last week, that I would not want to try something as crazy as an
upside down fish tank.
Uh-huh. Not me.
Yesterday, during lunch break, I slapped together an inverted tank to put into my nanotank.
You see, upside down fish tank is only telling half the story, you need a regular side up tank as well to make them work. Have you ever done dishes, and pulled a glass out of the dishwater upside down? Notice how the glass stayed full right up until you pulled it out of the water? This fish tank works the same way. You put the upside down tank into another container of water, and suck all the air out of it.
Brilliantly simple, really. I saw it on YouTube.
This is what the upside down tank looks like right after I made it. Notice the two open areas on each end. This allows the fish to swim into it.
Looking down the length of my nano-tank (nanotank means VERY small fish tank – mine’s 4 inches by 4 inches by 4 feet) you can see the inverted tank at the far end. It’s just a tad on the wide side, so didn’t want to go in on one side. I guess my home-made aquarium isn’t perfectly square. I cut the end pieces myself.
Here is the inverted aquarium looking at it from how you would normally see it. There are two fish in it here, you can kinda pick them out against the busy backdrop.
The whole mess sits on top of my 75 gallon tank, and is actually functionally part of the 75 gallon tank.
You see, Nano-tanks can be VERY difficult to manage do to their extreme small size. They don’t have any thermal mass, the water can go bad in a matter of hours if something starts to decompose in them. Just fussy tanks all the way around. I cheat, I have a 75 gallon ‘buffer’ tank to act as a filter for my nano tank. Yeah, Yeah, I know. I cheat.
The inverted fish tank is just a prototype. I will probably only keep running it for a few weeks until I make the next version of it (read that as Months or Years).
Not quite as impressive as it sounds, is it?
What do you think?
That’s sweet Mike!