British e-commerce retailer Charterhouse Aquatics has begun designing and 3D-printing its own range of reef aquarium products. It already lists over 40 own-branded products in its portfolio from frag racks to media baskets, frozen food defrosters to CO2 scrubbing collars and bristleworm traps, and all are made from reef-safe PETG plastic.
The frag racks come in a range of sizes and styles and come either fitted with or without plug grips. The Aqua Thaw Frozen Food Defroster is inspired, and although they weren’t the first to come up with it, Charterhouse’s version of an in-tank frozen food thaw-er blends some essence of pepper grinder with a hint of surface skimmer that had us playing with it and enjoying it for ages, twist-adjusting it to get the water inlet and dispense rate just right.
Fluval Evo nano reef owners will benefit from a full suite of after-market 3D printed media baskets and the joys of this form of manufacturing are that they quickly rustled up a media basket for our Maxspect Dice nano too.
There are some useful things like shades for Radion lights, ATO pump stands, and a magnetic seaweed clip, and pretty much everyone who uses Maxspect Nano Tech Bio Blocks and Bio Spheres utilizes a neat stand for them, which Charterhouse now also provides.
There is still definitely a place for large-scale plastic manufacturing, investment in tooling, and molding in the aquarium industry, but 3D printing has found its niche in cottage industry aquatic outlets like Charterhouse Aquatics, where a useful reef aquarium product can be devised, printed and delivered all within the same week. It’s a super useful technology for sure, and the reef hobby is richer for its invention.
