The RoboSnail: An Aquatic Roomba for Your Aquarium!

Posted by Dabney B. on Monday, June 25th, 2012

Image: AquaGensis.com

Having an aquariums is great and all, but keeping one of your own can be a real pain in the tail fin. You’ve got to keep the algae scrubbed off the glass, you’ve got to worry about the correct temperature and pH balances, and you have to watch to make sure that your fish aren’t catching parasites or diseases. Owning an aquarium means that you have to be part janitor and part veterinarian.

Luckily, aquarium owners aren’t alone in their fight against aquatic gunk. AquaGenesis, a company that specializes in aquarium hardware, has developed a handy little gizmo that will take care of a lot of the hard work of tank maintenance for you. The RoboSnail trundles around your aquarium glass, wiping up the grime and leaving the glass sparkling clean for your viewing pleasure. You ever see one of those robotic Roombas that cruise around a house, automatically sucking up dirt and confusing your pets? Well, the RoboSnail’s a lot like that, except that it’s vertical and waterproof.

The RoboSnail Sticks to Aquarium Surfaces

Image: reeftools.com

The way that the Robosnail works is both elegantly simple and ingenious. You put two identical Robosnails on your tank, one on the inside of and one on the outside. The two hold onto each other with powerful magnetic forces, and whenever one of them moves the other one moves with it. This brilliant feature allows you to efficiently clean both sides of your tank in half the time, and without terrifying your pet fish by plunging your gigantic hairy arm into their home. As soon as one of your glass panes gets cleaned, you just wait until they get to the top of your tank, separate them, and reattach them on another pane. Ta-da! Tank cleaning without getting your hands wet. And best of all, it comes with a recharger that’s totally safe, so you don’t have to worry about the robotic gizmo frying your beloved pets. I normally try not to advertise, but with a device as cool as this the marketing takes care of itself.

The RoboSnail has the perfect name. Sure, it kind of looks like a robotic snail, but the real meaning comes from its purpose. Those of us that don’t have $349 to drop on an aquatic Roomba will have to use normal snails (of the biological variety) to scrub their tank at the agonizingly slow rate of several millimeters per hour. Alternatively, you could always just train your cephalopods how to use a scrub brush like Scotland’s Jock the Octopus, but teaching them how to scrub the outside of your tank is going to be a real conundrum.