Fish bowls usually remind us of the least exciting part of the hobby; gold fish that are way too large for the bowl with no filtration and hideous gravel comes to mind. However, Jim’s azoox fish bowl is completely on the other end of the spectrum as one of the coolest systems of its kind. Jim’s reef bowl slightly reminds us of the bubble chair reef bowl, as this system shares the rounded curves and a clarity that you can only expect from spherical aquariums.
At 16” this tank is much smaller and as a non-photosynthetic system is also much more complicated. The azoox fish bowl unfortunately lacks the magic spark that would makes it absolutely mind boggling, but it’s cool concept make this an awesome system nonetheless.
At 16 inches in diameter the azoox fish bowl holds approximately 7 gallons when filled, so along with the sump the system is well within nano limits. It is not just the size and shape of the system that make this azoox fish bowl really cool. The system in general features some neat tricks as well. One of the first neat things is the systems pluming, which is designed to be invisible within the system. To accomplish this a 2” drain is used in conjunction with a 1/2 return plumped into the tube drain. With the big drain the system is able to handle a lot of water and a mag 5 is actually used to provide flow within the 7 gallon fish bowl.
Another neat thing is the stand which also serves as the sump. For the stand a sewage pipe large enough to hold the tank was used, and a bottom was glued in making the inner compartment water proof to serve as a sump.Within the sump a Tunze 9205 skimmer is used along with chemical filtration keeping the system nice and clean. The system is unfortunately currently for sale, but hopefully the system will be sold as a whole to maintain the legacy.
