'I spend at least as much time creating the design before I start to build.'īefore you decide on the tank dimensions, you must carefully think about where the remaining parts will be placed not only to make it into a suitable home for your fish, but also make it convenient and safe to keep. 'The hardest part is figuring out how to make all the stuff fit and make it look nice,' says Lower.

To transform your computer into an aquarium, Lower suggests that you spend a good portion of your time on planning the layout – build it on paper first. Five years later, this 'Lisaquarium' still decorates Lower's living room, providing a suitable home for his pair of gouramis. His next attempt, a 5-gallon tank fitted into an old Macintosh XL (a.k.a. He redesigned some basic parts in the plan, using plexiglass instead of glass and designing a different scheme for the filtration system. Frustrated at his failure but driven by the challenge of successfully completing what he set out to do, Lower went back to the drawing board. It leaked during the testing phase, only a few hours after it was filled. Roughly following a design he found on the Internet, his first project was the 'Macquarium,' a 2 1/2 gallon tank that was fitted into an old Mac SE case. Lower first started this hobby in 1995 when he was living in Tulsa, Okla., in order to make a few extra dollars. The Sarasota, Fla., computer programmer has built 50 of these computer tanks himself out of different Macintosh monitors, transforming them into living screensavers.

Time and money are hard enough to come by, but finding good advice is the real trick. Well, before you lug that old monitor out to the garbage heap, consider this: with about $80, a little time, the right tools and materials, and some good advice, you can transform your monitor into an aquarium.

Wondering what to do with that old computer collecting dust in some corner of your home? It's completely useless, but you still can't bring yourself to throw it away when you think about how much it cost.

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