I’ve been an avid aquarist for more than a decade, but after my last cross-country move I haven’t gotten around to establishing a new tank for a few years. Looking at what’s going on in the aquarium hobby these days, I’ve been blown away by the tech on offer. When I’m ready to install my next tank, these gadgets might very well be on my wish list.
1 Smart Aquarium Lights
When I started out with my first aquariums, they all used fluorescent tube lights, but eventually I moved to LED lights, ending with a few nice daylight-simulating LED clusters for my planted tank. However, these days you can get fully programmable lights that change their output over the course of the day to give the tank the right type of light at different times of days. So, instead of turning the light off at night with a timer like I used to, now it can get simulated moonlight, and then cycle through dawn, to midday, and back to dusk and nighttime again. There are even ones that have smartphone apps, though I personally don’t think much of this feature if I only need to program a preset once.
2 Auto Fish Feeders
If you think getting someone to take care of your dogs or cats while you’re on vacation is a pain, wait until you need to get someone to feed your fish. Especially if they ignored the all-important “just a pinch” part of the instructions. RIP my poor fish!
There have always been “vacation” feeders which are basically a big chunk of food you stick in your tank, which then slowly dissolves and feeds the fish over the course of a week or two. At least, that’s supposed to be the idea, but in practice these could do more harm than good.
Now, there are smart automatic feeders, and you don’t even need to restrict their use to vacations. Armed with a smartphone app and even different types of food fed at different times of day you’re all set. Where have these gadgets been all my life?
3 Smart Water Meters
Managing water quality was my biggest gripe when I last kept an aquarium. Is the water hardness right? What’s the pH level? Now you get smart fish tank water monitoring systems that look at key parameters and send you an alert via an app if anything drops below or goes above the range it should be in. Poor water parameters can be a silent killer, and if you only manually check things now and then, it may be too late to get your tank out of a death spiral. While the smart sensors I’ve looked at so far aren’t exactly cheap, if I think of the fish stock I’ve needlessly lost over the years, it’s a small price to pay and will definitely be part of my next setup.
4 Smart Aquarium Camera
Not a day went by when I was sitting at work where I didn’t wonder how my fish were doing. Sadly, apart from maybe pointing my webcam at the tank, there wasn’t much I could do to keep an eye on them while away from home. Now you can get aquarium cameras that make it easy. Some of the automatic smart feeders I mentioned earlier include a camera as part of the deal, so you get a nice two-for-one deal!
The art of fishkeeping has come a long way from the first attempts at keeping water animals in the home. The last time I immersed myself in the hobby, I thought it was already pretty convenient, but looking at all the fun new toys on offer today, I’m more eager than ever to get my feet wet again.
