5 Bizarre Fish Tanks Small Enough for Your Office Desk

Conventional fish tanks are so boring! Just looking at one of them makes me feel like such a square (get it?). Luckily, the aquarium hobby caters to an incredibly wide range of eccentricities. Today, we’re going to take a look at five truly weird fish bowls.

5. Umbra FishHotel

Figuring out where this tank got its name isn’t at all difficult. The irregular clear panels of the Umbra FishHotel are immediately reminiscent of a cityscape or apartment building. Its sleek, modern design and tiny size would make it a perfect fit for metropolitan yuppies who aren’t allowed to bring a cat or a dog into their $2,000/month flats. And you want to know what the really neat thing is? They stack! Your fish, too, can be peeved at their upstairs neighbors throwing overly loud parties and making bubbling sounds at 2 in the morning.

4. Fish Bowl Bookends

These are a neat idea and all, but there’s one major problem with them that makes me stop and wonder if somebody really thought these through. Bookends are intended to keep books between them, obviously. Books are heavy. As heavy as aquariums might be, I’d be seriously concerned about the ability of these somewhat small fish tanks to keep the books from falling. Not only that, but if they did fail it would be disastrous! Your fish be crushed beneath the weight of Shakespeare’s Complete Works, and you’d ruin half of the books on your bookshelf.

3. O Aquarium Vase

A bit similar to One Pot, Two Lives, this aquarium combines a fish tank with a potted plant. The neat thing about this aquarium is that it lets you merge aquatic life with terrestrial life. You could grow small water lilies in the tank, and plant some real lilies in the bowl. Perfect!

2. 1984 Fish Bowl

I’m not really sure what to make of this one. The great thing about aquariums is that they’re three-dimensional and are beautiful from every angle. The whole reason why we go through the trouble of getting a fish tank is for the spectacle. This fish bowl, however, obscures most of the tank, so much so that the line of sight to the fish inside of it is completely obstructed from certain angles.

But when you do view it from the right angle the domed portholes create a magnifying glass effect, which enhances your ability to get up close and personal with your fish. Overall, it really makes you feel like you’re examining a specimen under a microscope, or that you’re some surveillance operative spying on a sea creature. Considering that this bowl is inspired by George Orwell’s novel, “1984,” it’s a neat effect.

Big Brother is watching… but with a price tag of $469 you’d better make sure you have enough cash sitting in your bank account.

1. Acrylic Wall Mount Fish Bowl

I guess this is the fishy equivalent of a cat wall clock. With a little bit of creative engineering you could probably mount a normal wall clock to the back of it and create a weirdly distorted yet beautiful timepiece. Though, I’d be worried about the constant ticking driving my poor little goldfish mad.