Avo Fish Tank: An Innovative self-cleaning fish tank design created by the young British designer Suzy Shelley.
Avo self cleaning fish tank design requires no filter cleaning or water changes making fish keeping simple and beautiful.
Avo is packed full of technology and clever design features that make it really, really easy to keep fish. Here are a few of the things that make it so special.
I’ve always kept fish and it was a steep learning curve in the early days – trying to maintain a tank properly, making sure my fish were healthy and had a clean tank. Fish keeping isn’t as easy most people think – you’ll know yourself if you’ve ever kept fish. There’s important bacteria in the tank that need to be maintained, plus there’s the weekly water changes and smelly filter cleaning needed to maintain a healthy tank.
After extensive research, speaking to many fish tank owners and experts I decided I’d design something that takes the stress out of keeping tropical fish and makes fish keeping simple, beautiful and above all enjoyable. After over three years of research and development, plus 18 months of testing I have designed Avo – a self-cleaning fish tank.
No water changes. The fish, plants and bacteria work together to create a balanced micro-ecosystem. The harmful ammonia, nitrite and nitrate are removed from the water meaning the water never needs changing.
No filter cleaning. I’ve perfected a filtration system that is both natural and self-maintaining. The filter system is a moving bed filter system, this means the filter cleans itself so no filter cleaning ever.
Often fish tanks get algae, this usually means that there’s too much light and too many nutrients (nitrate) in the water. Avo’s plant specific LED lighting is automatic, which prevents algae. The light emitted is plant specific, providing the wavelengths that the plants need to photosynthesise and grow, making sure they are cleaning the water efficiently.
Avo’s lighting produces some wavelengths of light that our human eyes can’t even detect. To us they appear as three colors fading on and off automatically at different times of the day – soft red light in the morning, daylight white in the day and cool blue in the evening.
But don’t worry if you want total darkness when Avo is on there’s an override switch to turn the lights off until the next day.
The heating is taken care of too, a temperature of 27°C (80.6°F) is automatically maintained. This is the perfect temperature for most tropical fish. The heating elements are also cleverly positioned to create convection currents, helping the nutrients get efficiently to the roots of the plants.
The light looks pretty swirling around the bowl, but it does make it a bit difficult getting fish and plants into the tank. We’ve thought of this and the light is held in place by super strong neodymium magnets, plus a clever connector. If you need to get things in and out of the tank the light removed with an easy twist and snaps back into place.
There are 7 individual pots for plants that slot neatly into place around the filter system. This makes it really easy to care for the plants, they can be lifted out for trimming or easily rearranged to change the look of the tank.
Avo is a nano aquarium holding 15 litres (3.5 gal) of water, this is the perfect size for your desktop, coffee table or nightstand and is just right for beautiful tropical fish such as a bettas, shrimps or guppies.
As you can see from the photographs we have a working aesthetic prototype. We’ve been testing a working prototype for 18 months now so we know that the product works long term. Right at the moment we’re finalising the design for manufacture – consolidating parts, applying draft angles and preparing the little details of the product so it can be manufactured both efficiently and to the highest standard.
The next stage is where you will come in, the design is 99% ready and we’ll soon need to get going and make some fish tanks – this is why we are Kickstarting – we need the capital to pay for the tooling.
About The Designer:
My Name is Susan Shelley and I am the founder and director of Noux. I studied Industrial Design at University before going to work for a design studio in London. I left work in the design studio in 2013 to focus my efforts on developing Avo. I’m passionate about design and pets, I believe products should be both beautiful and functional, good design should make life both richer and easier. I believe Avo embodies all of these qualities.
I’m not developing Avo alone, there’s a team of folks. We have a top engineer who used to engineer at Dyson – he’s helping us perfect our design for manufacture and assembly plus some of the more complicated features of Avo. We’ve also got experts in marketing and PR helping us to tell the world about Avo, plus we have an accountant who is guiding us through the confusing world of tax and managing finances. I know that one person can’t do everything so getting the experts on board has saved me a lot of time and potential mistakes!
Thanks for reading about Avo Self Cleaning Fish Tank!
