Posted on: February 13, 2008
The Life Aquatic
Full-wall aquariums and jellyfish lightshows give the living room new meaning, dazzling everyone from regular houseguests to grade-school field trips
By Jake Laub
CTW Features
Image courtesy Infinity Aquarium Design
Lester Raines was so impressed with the aquarium he visited in Myrtle Beach, S.C., that he went home to West Virginia and built one - in his living room. The 20-foot long tank spans an entire wall and holds more than 4,000 gallons of water.
"Everyone who sees it is flabbergasted," Raines says. "I've had a couple friends of mine who are teachers and they've brought their first-, second- and third-grade classes over to look at it."
Raines' gigantic tank highlights a trend in custom aquariums: Bigger is better. People just can't seem to pass up putting living art in their living rooms, says Kim Patel, owner of Aquariumsource, a Chicago-based custom aquarium company.
"The trend is for a lot of folks who are remodeling or building to have these tanks be focal points in homes," she says. "They're designing their homes around the tanks and filtration."
While fish tanks are beautiful, filtration is one of the major issues potential aquarium owners must consider when building a custom tank. Raines' filtration system takes over an entire room.
The other concern is cost. According to Patel, moderately large tanks (125 gallons to 300 gallons) cost between $1,300 and $1,500 with filtration.
But if you have the cash, another type of trendy aquarium isn't for fish at all, but for jellyfish.
"They're so exotic; the movement of jellyfish is like living art," says Izzy Capuano, owner of Infinity Aquarium Design in Las Vegas. "Also, we play with fiber optics and different light. The jellies take on light, so we can get very creative."
However, jellyfish must be kept in special aquariums called kreisels to keep the delicate creatures away from the walls of the tank. The technology to do this has only recently become available on a residential scale and is still very expensive. Kreisels start at about $30,000, according to Capuano.
But if you have the resources and the space, there's nothing like an aquarium to make a room sparkle.
"A painting, granted, is absolutely gorgeous, but there's no motion with it," Patel says. "If you have an aquarium it's an ever-changing picture."