I love my BiOrb.
My brother sent me the round BiOrb as a birthday gift six years ago. (Thanks, Bro!) The tank stays incredibly clean. Filter changes are a snap. I don't change my filter or clean my tank as often as recommended: about every 6 months is usually often enough for me and my fish.
As someone with a fair amount of aquarium experience, I can truly say that the BiOrb amazes me. It holds all the joy of fish ownership with shockingly little work in return.
A really cool feature of the tank is the optical illusions caused by the spherical shape. Fish can "disappear" in the visual curvatures of the tank, or be reflected in another area of the tank. (One fish can appear to be no-fish or two fish.) This is nice entertainment for guests who are trying to count my fish. It also keeps me rather occupied when I'm worried that one of my fish is "missing," as it sometimes takes a bit of time to spot the fish I'm looking for. Fish swimming in certain areas of the tank are greatly magnified, so appear much larger than their actual size. After six years of ownership, this tank still provides a LOT of entertainment to me. Very Zen.
I've had to replace the halogen light and the air pump. The pump just lasted a year or two, then I got a replacement from the local pet store. The light shorted after about four years; ordering a replacement from Reef-One was easy. These two replacements do not seem abnormal to me... just part of the regular maintenance on any tank, in my opinion.
Really tiny fish can be sucked into the filter of the Biorb. I've only noticed that happening with small zebra daminaos. I've also had various tetras in the BiOrb (smaller than the daminaos) who had no problem staying where they belonged. If you notice the trapped fish, you can usually release them with no harm.
The literature with my BiOrb said it could support 3 large fish or 7 little fish. The biggest fish I've had in the tank are angel fish and fan-tail goldfish. I prefer smaller fish, since I enjoy watching schooling behaviors. (I've actually got 9 little fish in there at the moment. They appear happy and the chemical levels are okay.)
Just a bit more about the brilliant filtering system. I think the reason the tank stays so incredibly clean is that the air is pumped into the top-middle of the tank, so it creates a lovely water flow down the spherical sides of the tank and back into the central filter at the bottom. It's such an even pattern that debris is literally kept out of site and mind. Makes for happy fish and a happier fish owner.
I've read on-line that some people don't care for the plastic tank. I love it. Leak proof. Sturdy. No "bad" viewing angles. The instruction manual says to use care with cleaning products (don't want to scratch it!) but mine is blemish free even after all this time. Lighter and easier to set-up and move than a regular glass tank, as well. Really difficult to discern the molded seam of the tank, you have to really look. Most people never see it.
Another nice feature that is not often mentioned: no smell. The tank isn't exactly sealed: there's a nice lid with a little feeder hole so that dropping in food is easy. Most tanks, even well-cleaned ones, have a bit of an odor. This tank has nearly always been odor free.
Bottom line: YES! You'll love it, most any giftee will love it. Well worth the money!!!
I was lucky to find this in an 8 gallon on an auction site of all places, new in the box.
Great size, I have goldfish and one minnow. They were all in a 5 gallon and I don't want a big tank so this works great. It seems really large to me. And it's beautiful, love it when the light's on. I do want to get a LED bulb replacement for the evening when I can save enough to do so, but during the daytime I don't need any light, it gets indirect light from our patio door. I also bought some purple and blue Biorb plants, I liked the fakey retro cool look of them but any brightly colored plastic plants will do. I actually don't want to cover the air tube up because I like the way it looks -it's way cool. Ditto for the rocks. Reminds me of a futuristic fishbowl.
I don't find the pump noisy but it's resting on the carpeted floor near the wall. It does hum as all air pumps do. The thing that's loud is the bubbles from the air tube. I like it though, it's not an offensive sound, kind of like a bubbling fountain sound. The shape of the bowl really distorts the fish though, they can't really be normally seen unless they're close to the plastic. Otherwise they're magnified. Speaking of magnification, if this is put in direct sunlight, it can burn cause enough magnification of the sun's rays to start a fire!!! Seriously!
Although flake food is kind of messy, if I feed it in small amounts it goes quickly...I also have a supply of small-sized pellet food to give my fish from time to time.
One thing that I heard is that goldfish pee a lot, so I bought some Ammo Carb and instead of buying costly filters all the time, I just put a small amount (not too much or the filter won't work well) in after disposing of the old stuff and rinsing the sponge in aquarium water. So far it's worked well for me and the water continues to stay clear and the fish are very healthy (their color, activity and fins are straight up and they're really busy and always begging for food like goldfish do :0). Also, I heard that LED lights should be available soon in many more stores (especially here in Cali) and plan to purchase a bulb from our local home improvement warehouse for around $22. Also, the pump can be replaced with any air pump, it doesn't HAVE to be a BiOrb!!! :-)
Update: My BiOrb started leaking so I contacted the company -I had a hard time so I actually contacted the United Kingdom office by email and they connected me with a U.S. rep really fast. I'm actually in the process of receiving a replacement now, no charge to me with a return label for my leaking tank so I give this company a BIG thumbs-up for customer service!!!
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I bought the 8 gallon silver biorb with halogen light directly from Petco. I chose this aquarium because it looks stylish and because it came with everything needed (except heater), so it was easy to get started.
I started with 3 glofish (florescent coloured zebra danios), and now have 5 glofish and 1 betta. The tank looks quite nice, but one disadvantage of the design is that with the curved sides not all the fish are visible at once.
The main problem I have had is the glofish getting stuck in the filter. I bought the bubble tube guard, but they still find ways to get in through the water intakes at the bottom (they must be finding ways to swim through gaps in the ceramic rocks and then squeezing through the gaps in the filter case). In the 2 months I've had it, I've had 5 entrapments. Luckily the glofish are really tough, so they have survived the experience (except for the first one, which I accidentally dropped on the floor while rescuing I'm more careful now). Rescuing trapped fish is quite traumatic, especially when they are stuck in such a way as to be very difficult to get out. Each day I count the fish swimming around, and my heart sinks when one is missing....
So I can't recommend this aquarium for small fish of young glofish size. But it's not a really big tank, so that doesn't leave many options for fish choices.
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I bought 2 biorb 8 gallon aquariums about 2 years ago. I really like the idea and the size was just right. Right out of the box I had problem trying to remove the filter system on one. Other than that I had no problems till recently. The plastic that holds the air stone and the outside bottom plastic plate cracked in multiple spots especially around the screw holes and the aquarium started leaking. I would never recommend an aquarium that has brittle plastic used to seal the bottom. Reef-one web site says once it starts to leak in the bottom it can be tricky to get it to reseal. The bottom parts are not available for purchase, only the whole bowl with bottom parts.
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Love this product I have 5 now. Easy to set up and the aesthetics are great! You can see the fish clearly everywhere in the tank!
I wanted a titration based test for hardness (for better accuracy than the test strip kits) and this was one of the few I found. I checked a local pet store and they didn't have hardness tests at all. The instructions are very clear, explaining the types of hardness and how to conduct the test. I found it very easy to use, except that my water is so hard it was off the scale in the instructions! I think the scale goes up to 12 or 13 drops and I was around 22 before I got the color change. But you can fairly easily extrapolate the scale to higher values.
