Artificial aquarium: types and applications

The aquarium is considered by many to be an excellent way to find peace, relaxation from daily stress and endless tasks and responsibilities. It is believed that psychologically, a house for underwater inhabitants becomes the very water that you can look at forever.

But the ideal picture for the eyes will not be so if you do not take care of the aquarium and its inhabitants.... And not everyone can afford to take care and control. Someone postpones the purchase of an aquarium because of small children at home, someone just often moves, and someone is scared to take responsibility for living things due to their non-obligation or over-employment. And yet there is a way out, and it is called - an artificial aquarium.

Lovers of the marine theme will like such an acquisition. This is a beautiful product: the artificial aquarium fits organically into the interior. In particular, it is suitable for a room that is not yet inhabited enough. For example, the living room has the main thing - a sofa, a TV, possibly shelves and racks. But the feeling of emptiness does not leave, in this case, you can add a bright decorative touch to the arrangement of the room, and the artificial aquarium does it perfectly.

It becomes a semantic point, a decorative accent, which can then be played up. For example, such an aquarium can stand either on a pedestal or separately from it, being an independent structure.

Aquarium structures often play the role of a wall or partition; they can decorate a table or window sill. A dry aquarium is the general name for all products that outwardly resemble tanks with the underwater kingdom, but do without water and living things in them.

Almost all the advantages and disadvantages of such products are obvious. We can say that the main problem with a dry aquarium is that it cannot become a house for fish and other underwater inhabitants. But this is also its advantage: there is no need to take responsibility for living beings, and the decorative function, meanwhile, remains.

Advantages of dry aquariums:

• insignificant weight - this simplifies the search for a place for a structure, such aquariums can be easily inserted into niches;
• visual impact - if the aquarium is also illuminated, it becomes a decorative dominant of the room, a small work of art;
• composition mobility - you can change it, add sand in different ways, change its shades, saturate with new decor;
• ease of maintenance - there is no need to change water in a dry tank, just as there is no need to monitor the maintenance of its performance.

But nevertheless, the naturalness that is in a standard aquarium cannot be set in an artificial alternative. There will be no cute air bubbles, no swaying underwater gardens, no live fish.

The main division is built-in and portable aquariums. In the first case, the structure will be embedded in a wall, partition or niche. There may be a decorative dry aquarium in the coffee table top, for example. They are built into the floor, furniture, and pedestals. Remote structures are placed separately, placed on shelves, cabinets, racks, niches. There are also beautiful floor options for aquariums without water.

In shape, artificial reservoirs can be:

• spherical;
• rectangular;
• square;
• angular.

Florarium can also be called an artificial aquarium, one of its varieties. It is a closed system that can be used to illustrate how an ecosystem works.

An interesting and fashionable version of an artificial aquarium - compositions built into a niche in the floor... You need no more than 15 cm of space inside the floor for the composition with the image of the seascape to change the interior of the room. If the floor is not thick enough, you can build it up with a concrete screed or make a glass podium.

Structures built into the floor experience a considerable load, since people walk on them, therefore special requirements are imposed on the materials for their manufacture. The outer wall of a dry aquarium must be able to support the weight of several people. Therefore, glass is usually taken as triplex, a multilayer material that includes several glass layers that are bonded with a polymer.

The tank itself would not make sense if it weren't for the filling. The main idea of ​​such structures is to harmoniously select decor in one container and enhance its visual brightness with competent lighting.

To form the bottom, you need to take suitable sand. You can mix different fractions of sand: for example, in one place to lay a fine-dispersion composition, in another - to make an island of medium-dispersion sand, etc. The multi-colored layering looks interesting, when the beige layer of sand is replaced by orange, followed by purple, etc.

For additional decor are used:

• stones;
• towers;
• corals;
• shells of molluscs;
• underwater trees;
• figurines of jellyfish and fish (as live).

The choice for aquarists creating an imitation of the underwater world today is very large. There are many interesting bright artificial fish, which are really difficult to distinguish from living ones, crayfish, shrimps, frogs, algae. There are whole sets of decorations with dry crabs, for example.

The lighting of the aquarium deserves a separate mention. There are a lot of lighting options, color filters are also of considerable interest to the aquarist.

Very often, such structures are used as a room divider into zones. For example, the kitchen is combined with the living room, but you need to visually highlight two zones. A partition is placed in which a built-in dry aquarium is located. It can be large (1 m by 1.5 m), such large tanks are usually bought ready-made: with all the filling at once.

Such aquarium placement options can also be interesting.

• In the top of the coffee table. For a low but wide enough table, this decor will be luxurious. If this piece of furniture is actively used in everyday life (for example, you arrange evening tea drinking for it), the very appearance of the countertop will delight the eye and increase your appetite. But do not overdo it: there should not be a lot of decor in different planes. If there are a lot of paintings on the wall, the table may look clumsy.

• On the floor... In the living room by the window or in the center, in the home greenhouse, a large floor-standing dry aquarium will be very appropriate. Next to it, you can put a comfortable chair and a floor lamp to sit in this corner reading and enjoy the cosiness and beauty.

• In the nursery... It may be a little premature to put a real aquarium there, but an artificial version of it may well become an organic element of the room's decor. Children love to look at the animal world, even if it is an imitation.

You can make dry aquariums yourself. Starting with small glass containers filled with suitable soil, pebbles, shells, succulents and artificial marine inhabitants. They decorate the home, become a hobby for the whole family and a good distraction from technology, gadgets and household chores.

You will learn more about how to make an artificial mini-aquarium with your own hands.