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The truly functional Macintosh Aquarium!
Many years ago at Georgia Tech, my roomate Adam Hawkes and I decided to
make a MacQuarium like no other out there. We had seen many different
ones, but we knew we could it better. This is a truly functioning, self-contained
aqaurium capable of supporting just about any kind of aquarium life you
want, assuming it will fit in the tank. I have had this one running for
over 6 years now, with very little trouble.
There were several criteria we came up with in order to make this the
Ultimate Macintosh Aquarium. It had to:
1. Be completely self-contained.
2. Be virtually indistinguishable from a working Mac.
3. Be easily serviceable.
4. Have a fully functioning biological filter.
5. Be lighted.
6. Be compatible with Fresh or Saltwater.
7. Have the water level at the top of the screen, no half full screens
here.
We have succeeded in all of the criteria except for being completely self-
contained. We ran into problems finding a light timer that would fit inside
the enclosure. The prototypes we built had saltwater in them for about
a year before we decided to switch them over to fresh (the picture above
is fresh, below is saltwater). We were able to keep various species of
crabs and small fish such as pigmy angels, royal gramma, and bicolor pseudocromis.
It was a little too much work to keep the saltwater conditions habitable
in such a small volume. We would use water from a 55 gallon reef tank
for the water changes. With a little over 1.5 gallons total, keeping the
specific gravity constant was almost impossible. The SE tanks would evaporate
about 8oz. of water a day, so very hardy tide pool animals were the best
inhabitants.
We custom constructed the entire tank and filter out of 1/4" acrylic.
This was way overkill but at the time we had no idea what we were doing.
We made templates of all of the acrylic pieces in order to be able to
reproduce them later. At the time we designed the MacQuarium, wet/dry
filters were the most common form of filtration for saltwater aquariums.
This is the primary filtration we chose for the tank.
Below is a picture of the inside of the back shell. showing the light
fixture on top. Light power supply on the left. The lights are 9w powercompact
flourescents. They have a K rated of 7000, this is why we chose them for
the tank. On the bottom right there is the power supply for the cooling
fan which is located on the back of the shell where the cooling vents
are.
Below are several pictures of the inside workings of the Macaquarium.
On the left is a side view of the tank and filter assembly. The filter
is basically a wet/dry filter with a very tiny sump for the return pump.
We used hex blocks as the media. There is a mini-pump in there that returns
the water back up to the main tank. Finding a pump small enough to fit
in the sump was tough. It was also difficult to get enough flow out of
the prefilter so the tank would not overflow.
It took us about 2 weeks to do the prototype, and one week to do the next
one.
The tank (which is in my office at work) right now contains the following
inhabitants: 1 Otocinclus,1 Celebs rainbow, 3 neon tetras, 1 spotted cory,
and 1 australian rainbow. There are also several small Java Ferns. I am
using a fairly large chunk of cedar to help out with filtration and water
conditions. Since all of the critters are amazon this seems to work very
well. I have had the fish that are in there for over 2 years now.
Here is a Quicktime VR of the MacQuarium in Saltwater mode.
Jan. 2004 Update: I have taken it down for a major overhaul. I am planning
on making it into a SW tank again. We acquired a small 5g FW tank from a
friend who did not want it anymore. This gave me a chance to move the few
fish I had out of it so I could do some major modifications. I plan on making
the overflow larger to handle a larger pump for greater flow in the tank.
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