Building The Tank

The next problem was gluing each pane of glass together to form a cohesive tank.  In order to preserve the health of our future fish, we were forced to use aquarium-safe silicone sealant.  This stuff doesn’t cure all that fast, and is super messy to work with.  Holding the panes in place without sliding while trying to make all of the angles line up properly was a pain, to say the least.  Once we got everything together and had let it cure for 24 hours, we then apply a sloppy interior seal on each of the edges in order to maximize waterproofing.  My partner said that the silicone would barely show up once the tank was full of water, and she was right, although it looked terrible outside of the Mac enclosure.

The Inevitable Leaks

48 hours after sealing the edges, it was time to face the music and fill the tank with water.  At first, everything seemed cool – and by cool, I mean dry.  Unfortunately, after an hour of sitting with a full load of liquid the tank started to leak out of the bottom right corner.  We drained, dried with compressed air, then re-sealed.  48 hours later, the same thing happened.  After re-sealing a second time, it appeared as though we were good to go, despite an intermittent leak in the same spot that puzzled us both.  This was the most frustrating part of the entire Macquarium assembly, and if I could have bought a pre-assembled tank that fit inside the shell, I would have.

The Payoff

We filled the tank with gravel, bought a little plant and a pagoda and then installed a filter, air stone and LED light to brighten things up inside of the fairly dark tank.  We filled the Macquarium with water and voila – we had an environment suitable for lucky little fish-like occupants.  After waiting a week to make sure there were no more leaks, and that the water had a chance to acclimate to the tank we went and bought 1, 0 and Zed.  These neon tetras are cute, somewhat social (Zed is a loner) and seem to be thriving in their repurposed computer home.

Learning how to make a Macquarium was definitely rewarding.  I love our Macquarium.  It sits in our office bubbling away quietly in the background all day long.  While I wish we could fill it with a greater number of fish – three is really pushing it with 2.5 gallons – I find myself enjoying the water changes and cleaning that goes along with taking care of our new little fish.  I even dreamt about cleaning a fish tank last night with my magnetic scraper, which is somewhat alarming, I suppose.  The best part of the tank is the reaction that it gets from visitors, who are entranced by the tetras occupying what was once a mighty Motorola-powered machine.  I highly recommend that anyone who is thinking of building one of these tanks take the plunge and just go for it – the end results are well worth any momentary hassles that might be encountered along the way.

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