Comments on: RIVER PLANT AQUARIUM by Mathieu Lehanneur

By: TVfuzz

TVfuzz — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:53:34 +0000

This designer knows nothing about aquariums. Its like looking at a square-wheeled car designed by someone who knows nothing about driving cars, but likes squares.

I see this as a product made my someone who doesn’t know how to keep fish, for people who don’t care about keeping fish, but like this photography (The terrible water strikes a muted balance with the ambient lighting and soft focus). Anyone who would own this type of art would soon have dead fish in a nasty, dirty tank.

If you want to see a real designer of properly balanced aquaria, do an image search for Takashi Amano.

By: baci269

baci269 — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:51:09 +0000

i am sorry- i think that designers nowadays who claim to be ecologically responsible don’t usually take the animal’s welfare into consideration. we design world class aquariums and are very sensitive in the way we exhibit marine creatures to make sure that we get past the step of “objectifying” nature and to instill the lesson of respect for nature to all classes of people who are visiting.
the act of stuffing freshwater fish in what looks like a contrived container (i appreciate the minimalism, i am one) expresses the act of capturing and controlling nature more than helping express the beauty of a healthy biological system. i understand the filtration insufficiencies and the “nature” of river fish to require water currents- that’s surely lacking in expressing the nature of “nature”.
if we are not careful, as designers, we express superficial ideas without much substance. it DOES look good…is that all?

By: christof.lapd

christof.lapd — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 09:26:12 +0000

I think this is cruel! Poor fish.

By: sameermahoolkar

sameermahoolkar — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:25:22 +0000

excellent piece of DESIGN.
really its difficult to say weather it is art more of science totally.
i think less and small size fishes would have been more comfortable inthis tank.

good work!!!
and all the best :-)

By: theokobox

theokobox — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:51:24 +0000

You’d have to hurry up and eat those fish since there isn’t much space for them to swim around.

By: gbgirl

gbgirl — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:07:19 +0000

This has been done before, and it works, although his setup may need some work. I was just reading about these folk in Australia that have set up that sort of system. It\’s really interesting, but a lot more work than his setup.

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/gallery.htm

By: argalite

argalite — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:24:35 +0000

River fish need flowing water usually. Looks like eels in the one tank, and they can breathe through their mouth as well as their gills. What feeds the fish? Those tanks are gonna be pretty dirty without adequate filtering, which those plants are not capable of doing, as there are not enough of them

By: elepski

elepski — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:23:09 +0000

Any tank of that size will need mechanical and biological filtration…In fact.. those tanks appear to be freshly installed and are suffering from a ammonia and nitrate spike… hence the cloudy water.

By: mordicai

mordicai — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:42:26 +0000

People are wimps– will they really kill their own fish?

By: dimtick

dimtick — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:17:06 +0000

this looks very cool but I don’t think it works. the problem here is the quantity of water in relation to the amount of plant material. the plants in this system are very undersized for the quantity of water. so within a short amount of time the fish will be overwhelmed by algae which will suck out the oxygen from the water and kill the fish.
maybe there’s a secondary filtration / oxygenation system that isn’t readily apparent in the images.