Category: Aquarium

Tiny aquarium fish net 3D print

Introduction

I recently bought a 3D printer, and also recently acquired a new, very popular hobby (for my standards at least): I have a tiny 10 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm fish tank on my desk! What to do with such a tiny fish tank? Well, it’s not all disadvantages.

Disadvantages:

  • You can’t put in a lot of things to look at
  • You can’t put in filters, heaters, or other large devices. Even most fish nets are too big.
  • You only put in about 0.8l of water, so there is not a lot of thermal mass. The water temperature quickly rises or falls to the room temperature.
  • …

Advantages:

  • You only put in about 0.8l of water, so it’s very light. You can easily carry the thing around, put it next to somebody else, turn it around, take it to your bathroom (etc.) when performing maintenance.
  • It will never tip over.

I have a couple Cabomba plants in it. And apparently the Cabomba had at least one pond snail egg on it! So after two weeks I suddenly had a pond snail too! It’s super cute in my opinion.

Snail-kun, with mouth open. Probably Radix auricularia japonica. Currently cleaning the glass. Can also be observed moving along the water surface while submerged, i.e., upside-down!
スネールくん（モノアラガイだと思う。この写真ではガラス面を掃除してくれているが、水面を逆さになって這うこともよくある。割と観察が楽しいタニシじゃないでしょうか。モノアラガイの漢字は物洗貝、だそうです。）

Cabomba plants seem like they would like to grow tall. In fact, they were already much taller than my tank when I got them. So I planted them “diagonally”, and they seem to be okay with that. I have the tank for a month now. Initially, some of the cabomba plants developed white mold-like growth on the tips (which were already protruding from the surface of the water), so I got rid of those, but I still have plenty.

Initially I’d thought I’d like a tiny fresh-water shrimp in the tank, but I decided against it because they’re apparently really fussy about water quality. Plus the Cabomba plants may still have residual pesticides on them.

Making the 3D model

So, since most fish nets are way too big, I decided to DIY it with the 3D printer and some mesh material I had lying around, namely, kitchen sink strainer mesh bags.

After buying the 3D printer (also about a month ago), I learned how to use FreeCAD. Making this 3D model took less than 10 minutes. Here’s how:

  1. Use the arc tool to draw the round parts of the outer edge.
  2. Use the line tool to draw the holder.
  3. Use the circle tool to draw the inner hole.
  4. Use the circle tool to draw the small holes (seen on the left side in the image above). I used a diameter of 2 mm.
  5. Use distance constraints to space them evenly.
  6. Apply “Pad”. I chose 1 mm.
  7. If you’re satisfied with the result, duplicate the entire body (copy and paste).
  8. Delete the padding in the new body. We will pad different parts of the sketch individually.
  9. Select just the outer frame, like in the image below.
  10. Pad by 1 mm.
  11. Then select just the small circles, and pad by 2 mm.
  12. You’re done!

You can now print out the file. Put the mesh material between the two parts of the holder, and use pliers to mate the protruding parts with the holes. (Bambu A1 Mini, standard 0.4 mm nozzle, bog-standard PLA, selected “precise wall” in OrcaSlicer. Your mileage may vary!) You may or may not need to use pliers (to create more force in a small spot) to mate the two parts of the holder together.

Like this, aight.

3D model

Here’s an archive with the .FCstd (FreeCAD) file and a .3mf file:

mini_aquarium_netDownload