With all the hot corals and new products running around Reefapalooza, it was hard to get event-goers to pay attention to anything else. However one booth by Sandbar Pet Shop from Mission Viejo CA had an impressive display of aluminum aquarium art, with cool designs and carved from solid aluminum slabs.
Anyone with access to basic milling and water-cutting tools can carve out any old fish from metal and call it art, but the style and pattern of these particular pieces are wild, imaginative, and they turned heads of everyone passing by. We know because the Reef Builders booth was situated directly across from the Sandbar Pet Shop and we had ample time to not only appreciate the artwork, but also to watch people’s reactions to them.
The impressively crafted aluminum fish art was created by Elite Waterjet who specializes in using water to (carefully) tear up all kinds of materials into decorative and industrial works of art. The pieces on display by Sandbar were priced at around $1000 and $1500 for the ‘carvings’ which are in the neighborhood of two feet tall by three feet long, and can double up as the world’s heaviest stencil.
Elite Waterjet can cut into all kinds of materials with extreme precision including all forms of metals and acrylic. We wonder how long it’ll take for someone to order a custom door panel for an aquarium stand designed in the spirit of the panels we saw at the Sandbar Pet Shop booth because that’s one of the few things we haven’t yet seen installed on a high end aquarium.
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