Clear fish viewing pipe - DIY build advice

Hi all,

I am looking to build a fish viewing pipe between aquariums. The idea is for fish to be able move between aquariums through a vinyl pipe which is visible above the aquarium. My current aquariums use safe plastic so the pipes could either be drilled and sealed into the side of the aquarium I could use some right angle joiners or similar so the pipe goes above the top of both tanks i.e. the pipe angle fittings you find in hardward stores.

My initial research has taken me towards vinyl tubing but I had a feeling there were some gurus here who would have some ideas for clear pipe or similar that could be used.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance for your help

 

hi welcome to fishlore,

govesrim, i planned to do these with 2 5 gallon tanks never went ahead with it,
1. because i didnt want to drill in glass
2. because my hardware store only had clear flexable tubing but wasnt wide enough for fish to swim through
3. I didnt have aqua safe silicon on hand,(i could buy at hardware store they do have it, btw im in AUS)

so if you can find the supplies i would go with the bridge over tank rather than drilling in glass
1. less worry and mess
2. wont risk cracking hole sheet of glass or tank
3. if you dont want bridge in future you can take it off, with drilling it would mean you would need to patch the hole

 

You can buy ridged acrylic pipe but I don't know about fittings. If you cut them really nicely you could make 2 mitre joints and glue them.

 

Hi all,

I am looking to build a fish viewing pipe between aquariums. The idea is for fish to be able move between aquariums through a vinyl pipe which is visible above the aquarium. My current aquariums use safe plastic so the pipes could either be drilled and sealed into the side of the aquarium I could use some right angle joiners or similar so the pipe goes above the top of both tanks i.e. the pipe angle fittings you find in hardward stores.

My initial research has taken me towards vinyl tubing but I had a feeling there were some gurus here who would have some ideas for clear pipe or similar that could be used.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance for your help

Another thing that I saw someone do looks pretty nice but requires more tanks. She took 2 tanks and put them side by side with a gap in between. Then she took a kind of upside-down "U" shape tank but more square and flip it onto the 2 tanks. Then she sucked out the air from the top tank so the water would be able to flow into it. Does that make sense? Let me know if it doesnt.

 

Gpixl I think that is what the op was suggesting they were going to do

 

Gpixl I think that is what the op was suggesting they were going to do

Oh I see. I saw him saying it was a pipe so I wasnt sure.

 

Thanks everyone for great ideas. You've given me a lot to research. As a heads up my tanks are actually more pond style buckets in the ground. I have a series of these in the ground with espaliered avocados inbetween :

The tanks have local pygmy fish in them and I have drilled side flow holes into them near the top so that when my retic turns on it flushes the water nutrients for fertilisation of soil for avocados. I think this is relevant because soft tube like vinyl could work given the tubing could just lay across the ground. This is relevant to PeterFishKeepin 's post. Relevant because I can use soft pipe and also relevant because the bucket I have is very easy to drill into.

The local hardware store (Bunnings in Australia) only sells clear vinyl tubing up to 38mm diameter.

I have found online suppliers of wider diameter vinyl which I will investigate further alongside the acrylic pipe idea. I tried looking into silicone pipe but this is prohibitively more expensive.

Thanks all for the help

 

govesrim, thats correct i use bunnings too and i would say 38mm is too small for anyfish to swim through even a neon tetra, and a hole that small isnt going to be easy to attrack the fish to swim into, but if its something like 150mm the fish will feel safe swimming through it

 

Thanks everyone for great ideas. You've given me a lot to research. As a heads up my tanks are actually more pond style buckets in the ground. I have a series of these in the ground with espaliered avocados inbetween :

The tanks have local pygmy fish in them and I have drilled side flow holes into them near the top so that when my retic turns on it flushes the water nutrients for fertilisation of soil for avocados. I think this is relevant because soft tube like vinyl could work given the tubing could just lay across the ground. This is relevant to PeterFishKeepin 's post. Relevant because I can use soft pipe and also relevant because the bucket I have is very easy to drill into.

The local hardware store (Bunnings in Australia) only sells clear vinyl tubing up to 38mm diameter.

I have found online suppliers of wider diameter vinyl which I will investigate further alongside the acrylic pipe idea. I tried looking into silicone pipe but this is prohibitively more expensive.

Thanks all for the help

Ive actually seen what I said previously with ponds. Idk how big yours is but the one I saw was that they stacked concrete bricks or smth and put the upside-down "u" shaped aquarium on those bricks or whatnot and the fish swam into it so it would be a cool 'viewing' area.

 

As a heads up I came across these links and thought I would share incase anyone in future stumbles across this and it helps them

Learn to Build a Fish Bridge Between Aquariums

 

I'm just a little curious; what's the idea behind this?
Reminds me of those hamster cages. Fun for kids? Sure. But what else?
Again, just curious.

 

I wanted to do this for 2 , 5 gallons to provide more swimming space adding to 10 gal + tunnel, it can also connect be very entertaining to watch the fish swim through. Perhaps to op has a different reason.

 

ruud your question was pretty much spot on answered by PeterFishKeepin.

Looking for more abstract reasons fish appear to have personalities and freedom to behave differently encourages that freedom of expression. E.g. clear fish towers that fish swim up appear to have certain fish that will just love doing that. Or potentially the argument that fish appear to have a favourite spot in the tank that is unique to them.

Another abstract reason could be symbiosis with nature and the fish regulating there movements based on which tanks are most balanced given how these tanks (large tubs) are in the ground and have retic through the bottom to flush nutrients into surrounding espaliered avocados. Some tanks will naturally have various natural processes occur and fish have freedom to move where is comfortable e.g. nutrient balances changing due to variations in retic (given I haven't fine tuned), more or less leaves growing in certain tubs, temperatures fluctuating at various times in the day given these tubs are outside and some have more or less exposure to sunlight.


Also thinking in terms of fish breeding it increases variation. Each tank if not connected would likely be comfortable for 2-4 fish. By connecting 5 of these tanks there is significantly more room for tanks to grow. Alternatively I could leave them separate and create drastically different conditions (e.g. blocking out the sun, water variations, food variations etc.) and play god watching to see if any evolution occurs haha..

Chemistry thought process would be increasing the chances of reactions through increase in volume and variables,

Probably an unnecessary reflection but given you asked the question and you all helped me I thought I should give it a go.

 

You are getting carried away with "island biogeography" theory .

In effect it is not going to be different from having a (very) large (species-only) tank that offers different conditions. For instance, in one of my Dario-only tanks, the group of Dario fish that live in this tank, are "sunbathing" or "worshipping the solar deity" early morning on one side of the tank that catches sunlight.

That said, I'm sure you can create more polarised conditions through a tunnel system. If you have the time and pleasure to create such a system, keep us posted.

 

I have nothing to offer with logistics but I’m guessing this is outdoors ? Would the aus temps cause the slow flow water in the pipe to raise really quickly ? Making the tube more of a hot coals style journey rather than a comfortable tootle between buckets …

If I have any details wrong then just disregard this comment

 

Well I'm also from Aus but the deal is location, if he/she lives in northern or central states or territories like QLD or NT than it will most likely get too hot, as it's close to tropical Indonesia. If they live in Southern areas like SA or VIC or ACT then they should be okay as they are close to Antarctica, but temp is very different in different areas of states or territories, for example, I live in Sydney and in summer temps can get to 40 degrees Celsius but my holiday house 100km South in the Sourthern highlands on gets to summer highs of high 20 to low 30.

Also fish species in outdoors is important, if too cold most tropical fish can't be keeper outdoors, but same withing cold water fish in the heat. Unless you bring then inside to tanks during winter or summer, depends on fish needs and it's size.

Also it depends if it's getting full sun, shade, part shade and so on, my holiday house 850 gal pond, is in like 75% sun for around 8 hrs a day makes no difference to temp but, because pond is big it takes lots of heat source to heat pond, because the bridge most likely won't be more than a couple gallons that can be heat a lot quicker.

Sorry for the heap of writing it just flowed out of me let me know if something didn't make sense.

Happy fish keeping,
PeterFishKeepin