What's your dream aquarium product that doesn’t exist?

[Odd Duck]

On 7/22/2020 at 10:20 AM, Cory said:

I want IV drip bags filled with live baby brine or green water, daphnia, or rotibers that you hang and control the drips into aquariums to feed over time.

id also love it if there was fairy shrimp eggs have vested in mass so it was freshwater brine shrimp essentially.

I tried this years ago when I raised a clutch of Betta splendens.  I used an empty IV bag, cut open the top end leaving the hanging hole intact.  I added old tank water and hung it so it got some sun (this was way before good lighting), added some pond water, and fed it tiny amounts of food until I had green water.  It was very difficult to adjust the drip rate slow enough that the whole bag wasn’t in the tank by the time I got home from work.  It was either dripping too fast or not dripping at all.  IV pumps are small enough and accurate enough now that if you had a decent sized tank to supply the culture, you could have enough control that a single liter bag could last a few days.  You probably couldn’t grow the culture fast enough in the bag to provide a continuous supply, but with help from a separate tank of green water (or rotifers, etc), you could run a continuous drip.  
 

You can buy an IV bag and administration line pretty cheap, open it, rinse it, and fill it with whatever solution you want.  Easy to drop in an air stone to keep the culture from settling.  An IV pump will run about $800.00 minimum, though, and would tend to mash whatever is running through the line.  They also make in-line gravity-fed regulators but they would almost certainly clog with most any culture.  They might manage green water.

[Odd Duck]

On 7/21/2020 at 8:49 PM, DaveSamsell said:

How about an automatic, ultrasonic biofilm/algae scraper.  With fully adjustable parameters not to damage silicone seals, remove programmed levels of layers of build-up & an alert when completed.  Well, at least I can dream..  🤔😏

Like a Roomba for the tank?  I’m in!

[Odd Duck]

On 7/24/2020 at 2:30 PM, Ksant6 said:

Mine is a root tab inserter thingy.  Like giant syringe for root tabs because my tank is deep and my arms cannot reach the substrate without me getting soaked.  After searching feverishly for such a thing I actually saw it on one of Rachel  O'Leary's videos. She said it is not available in the U.S. 

 

So it exists and i am waiting for Aquarium Co-op  to bring it to us.

Like this?  Might not be long enough.  This is only about 8” long but might be enough to let you reach.  It will hold a capsule root tab, not sure about the tablet ones.

[Andrew Do]

I think something like this exists but. I would love some type of short non intrusive canopy to go over my lights and glass lids so that all of the light is reflected down into my planted tanks and keeps my room from being insanely bright from the top. I’ve tried using aluminum foil and reflective packing material but I have to move it every time I feed or have to do maintenance and I just want a simple canopy lid system to go over it and all I have to do is lift the canopy door to get to the lid. I’m not very great at diy so I wouldn’t trust myself to make this for all of my tanks. Especially since they are of varying dimensions and I don’t want to get the measurements wrong. Technically those kit tanks or hoods come with black lids with lights under them but I’ve noticed many of them have lights that aren’t bright enough for me or they don’t cover enough area for all my plants. I would love to have something like this over my 75 so that guests don’t just see a led bar over the tank. It would be a good combo to go with the lights the coop sells so that you can hide other things inside too like HOBs and other over the top filtration, pothos, wires like heater wires or airline tubing.

[gardenman]

3 hours ago, Andrew Do said:

I think something like this exists but. I would love some type of short non intrusive canopy to go over my lights and glass lids so that all of the light is reflected down into my planted tanks and keeps my room from being insanely bright from the top. I’ve tried using aluminum foil and reflective packing material but I have to move it every time I feed or have to do maintenance and I just want a simple canopy lid system to go over it and all I have to do is lift the canopy door to get to the lid. I’m not very great at diy so I wouldn’t trust myself to make this for all of my tanks. Especially since they are of varying dimensions and I don’t want to get the measurements wrong. Technically those kit tanks or hoods come with black lids with lights under them but I’ve noticed many of them have lights that aren’t bright enough for me or they don’t cover enough area for all my plants. I would love to have something like this over my 75 so that guests don’t just see a led bar over the tank. It would be a good combo to go with the lights the coop sells so that you can hide other things inside too like HOBs and other over the top filtration, pothos, wires like heater wires or airline tubing.

This isn't exactly what you're looking for, but it's the canopy I build for my tanks and it hides the lights and everything else. I've lost fish to jumping before so I wanted a jumper safe canopy with the glass (acrylic in my case) higher up so the fish can jump without getting injured. It's pretty easy to build using PVC trim boards from Home Depot or Lowes. The PVC cement used for PVC pipes holds it all together. It gives my fish eight to ten inches of jumping space before they hit anything but air above them. The acrylic is recessed down from the top an inch or so to help hide the lighting. The front door on this one swings up to give you access to the tank. It's a pretty easy build. I used PVC half round molding to hold the acrylic in place. I used scraps of PVC to give the door some backing and to block excess light from leaking out around the door. The PVC trim boards come in white, but it paints very easily. The white on the inside helps reflect the light and since it's PVC it just wipes clean and will never rot or decay. I'm a bit biased, but I think it's the best tank cover you can get. The humidity is largely contained inside the cover limiting evaporation. The fish can jump if so motivated without hitting their heads on a cover. (Unless they're an Olympic jumper who can get that high.) Plants can grow out of the water up to eight to ten inches. The only negative is you lose some light intensity from the lights being higher above the aquarium.

 

[Bradg104]

I would love to see an inline container, of sorts, that you can "depend on" to remove chlorine and chloramines from tap water without having to separately treat the water before putting in your tanks. (charcoal is not considered dependable for very long)   

[Rachel]

Funny thing but I was just thinking about this yesterday! 

 

My dream invention would be a gravel cleaning system similar to an undergravel filter. The system would have a tank attached underneath the fish tank with a connection to the two (somehow). You would be able to turn it on and it would suck out all of the built up crap. 

I would also add another members idea of having a built in water system in the wall so all I would have to do it turn the water on to fill thr tank back up.

 

It would also be nice if I had an something to measure the all water parameters that would give me the results in digital form. 

[loach keeper]

my dream thing for my aquarium would be a kind of sponge filter that you never had to clean and that would autamticaly feed your fish and do water changes

[Michael G]

I wanted a hang on back filter that i could plant terrestrial plants in aquaponics style. So i made one using a rectangular flower planter and many trips to home depot. 

Really wished there was one commercially available. I think i spent 150$ on supplies. 

It's been running for the past year and it might be time to modify the design to make cleaning the pre-filters easier and maybe put a space for the heater. 

 

Edit-- its a stainless steel rectangular prism. About 32 x 5 x 6.

The overflow is an outdoor pond overflow part that i cut and heated up to bend to the correct shape.

The hanging brackets are alum U channel and the pump is a submersible 750?

Clay pellet media with sponge filters in the bottom.

Edited January 15, 2021 by Michael G
Added pictures

[Dogfish63]

On 8/18/2020 at 5:23 PM, Wesley said:

Not really an idea but do color blind people have issues with reading the test colors / charts?

I have difficulty since I am slightly color blind. Sometimes one eye is worse that the other so sometimes I use the other eye.. I have trouble with shades of certain colors.

[Aquater]

Is there already a net that holds water with it.  I raise Dwarf Puffers.  I ordered a wet/net from Aquatic arts but its to small.  Anyone have any ideas?  The little guys have to stay submerged all the time.  If it does not exist yet -- any cleaver ideas folks??
Thanks!

[Lyssa]

On 7/21/2020 at 10:12 PM, gcalberto said:

I'd love some sort of substance that acted like activated charcoal, but was able to absorb nitrates, so that you either wouldn't need to do water changes or would have to do them a lot less frequently. I sometimes travel for work, and my roommate feeds the fish, but he can't do water changes, which is sometimes a problem. I do use seachem purigem, but i'm not sure how effective it is at decreasing the need for water changes

I'd like some way to detect when Seachem's Purigen goes bad. Lost quite a few fish until it was removed!

[gwennsc]

My dream product would be a usb heater! I lost several fish to a power outage and being able to hook the heater up to a battery pack would be great!

[Hailey]

I may be alone in this, but I really wish there were more tech products for aquariums. You can set up lights on a timer, but I haven’t been able to find a Bluetooth/wifi thermometer and heater. I work and go to school so I’m out of the house a lot and I worry about my fish whenever I’m away. The best solution I found was setting up a webcam to show my regular thermometer, and putting my heater on a wifi plug so I could turn it off and on from anywhere. I have 8 aquariums so that’s not a viable option. I also found a gadget that would monitor my tank’s temp and shut off power to the heater if it got too hot, but that heater would not turn back on automatically, and didn’t connect to my phone, so if I didn’t check it very often, my fish could be without heat for too long  

 

It would be so nice to have a thermometer/heater combo that connected to my phone (like the wifi plugs, or my fluval aquasky) so that I can check and adjust all the temperatures as needed from work. Fluval has the app part figured out, so I would love to see them do something like this. 

[Dee Parsons]

Anoxic filters remove nitrates!  Also called BCB baskets...look them up...simple and amazing.  I turned the flow way down on my canister filter and now zero nitrates.  The nitrogen cycle is complete!

[Dee Parsons]

Regarding USB heaters, a good solution that I use is a cheap rechargeable battery that plugs into the wall, has a standard outlet plug, then I plug my heater and/or pump into that.  It operates like normal, but if the power ever goes out, it keeps running for a while.  You could also use a battery powered air pump.

[Renegade]

On 8/1/2020 at 5:05 PM, Pat.Shaw said:

This has got to be a thing..

A outlet plug that I can hook my filter up to that can be turned off for only a few minutes when I feed and automatically turns it self back on.

When I feed my 75g african cichlid tank I like to unplug the filter so it wont suck up any food. Then I plug it back in when 90% of the food has been consumed. The problem is every so often I forget to plug it back in. 

Amazon - get a smart plug. My favorite are by Kasa. You use a smartphone app to set schedules and timers for anything you plug into them. I use them for my mechanical filters. I don't want them on all the time because it's too much current but when I  do water maintenance it kicks up stuff I want filtered out. So I have it set for off, then after I do the water changes I set a timer on the switches to turn on, but then turn back off in 2 hours (you could totally do the opposite). I also use them to set the time my aquarium lights are on.  Super easy and versatile. 

[Streetwise]

@Hailey:

 

[JettsPapa]

8 hours ago, Aquater said:

Is there already a net that holds water with it.  I raise Dwarf Puffers.  I ordered a wet/net from Aquatic arts but its to small.  Anyone have any ideas?  The little guys have to stay submerged all the time.  If it does not exist yet -- any cleaver ideas folks??
Thanks!

 

Here you go.

[Jdogtrainer]

12 hours ago, Michael G said:

I wanted a hang on back filter that i could plant terrestrial plants in aquaponics style. So i made one using a rectangular flower planter and many trips to home depot. 

Really wished there was one commercially available. I think i spent 150$ on supplies. 

It's been running for the past year and it might be time to modify the design to make cleaning the pre-filters easier and maybe put a space for the heater. 

 

Pictures? 😌

[Jeff]

On 1/13/2021 at 10:20 PM, Tanks alot said:

An hob filter with adjustable outflow direction for improved circulation would be great!

Are you saying that you want to point the flow towards one area only like a sprinkler? Or, just adjust the amount of out put flow in general

[Critter Mom]

On 7/21/2020 at 9:12 PM, gcalberto said:

I'd love some sort of substance that acted like activated charcoal, but was able to absorb nitrates, so that you either wouldn't need to do water changes or would have to do them a lot less frequently. I sometimes travel for work, and my roommate feeds the fish, but he can't do water changes, which is sometimes a problem. I do use seachem purigem, but i'm not sure how effective it is at decreasing the need for water change

I'd love this too!

[Tanks alot]

I would like to be able to adjust the direction of the flow for better overall circulation. Similar to the benefits of a canister filter or some internal filters.

[Daniel]

With all sincerity, isn't this what plants do? They absorb nitrates and reduce the need for water changes.

[Socqua]

19 hours ago, Hailey said:

It would be so nice to have a thermometer/heater combo that connected to my phone

I mentioned the inkbird earlier in this thread. Just hookup your heater to the inkbird thermostat and you can control the temperature remotely, monitor it, etc..