LEGO Aquarium

[MajorAlvega]

Hello.

Last weekend we had our major exhibition at the North of Portugal, PLUG Braga BRInCKa 2016.

Me and my wife showed this LEGO aquarium, "As Sereias e a Cidade Perdida" ("The Mermaids and the Lost City"):

Water (near 15l) of course, is not LEGO. All other parts are LEGO except some nuts I used:

- 2 small M3 nuts inside the shell to force it to go down when air escapes (I'm also not sure if pneumatic tubes are LEGO or not, I got them at bricklink some time ago). Those 2 nuts could probably be replaced with LEGO magnets but I don't care much for purism.

 

- near 140 M5 nuts inside the large green bricks at the bottom to increase weight and prevents all bricks from floating around (could use boat weight bricks, have enough for that but would take lots of space
 

The air compressor is from Sariel - two pumps generate the curtain's bubbles, one pump is for the shell movement and the fourth pump is for the pyramid. There's also a Power Functions Light - one LED inside the pyramid and the other near the shell, behind the dolphin.

The idea came after Paredes de Coura Fan Event, in June, where I attended Oton Ribic "Water" presentation. All those blue slopes came from Paredes de Coura and I had to do something with them.

For the exhibition I used a few drops of a sodium hypochlorite solution to prevent algae and other micro-organisms to grow. So no real fish could be shown but I used a small Nemo electro-mechanical toy fish that swims a few seconds each time someone knocked the aquarium glass (sorry, forgot to record).

A few more photos at flickr

[Imanol BB]

Hi, i think it looks really amazing, it would be a very cool decoration in mamy events (or even houses), maybe some people could say that this is not fully Technic, but is not my case because at least the pump and the air tubes are from Technic, so i can accept that; i like the shell and how the air system works in this model is pretty nice, maybe some people would say that is not a very acceptable or purist solution to use nuts as weight, but for me is okay if the viewers don´t see them; i think you made a very cool work on it and it works as good as it looks, thanks for sharing your creation.

[MajorAlvega]

Thanks.

I don't mind if this is not considered Technic and moderator changes it to another place. I presented it as Technic and people at the exhibition who asked about it learned something about pneumatics, mechanics, motors, physics... so my goal was reached no matter how it is categorized.

[dr_spock]

Neat. Steel nuts work but they can rust over time if you don't protect them. I had Megablok Halo builds in an aquarium with live fishes. It didn't take long before things started growing on them. Since it was MB, I didn't care too much.

 

 

[The lego fan]

Pretty cool idea in lego form and I think it looks awesome. Which sets do those dolphin moulds come in as I realy like them!

[MajorAlvega]

1 hour ago, The lego fan said:

Pretty cool idea in lego form and I think it looks awesome. Which sets do those dolphin moulds come in as I realy like them!

Thanks.

The grey one is rather old (6228b) but the purple one (13392pb02) is from last year set '41072 - Naida's Spa Secret', there's a simillar one (13392pb01) on current year sets.

[The lego fan]

8 hours ago, MajorAlvega said:

Thanks.

The grey one is rather old (6228b) but the purple one (13392pb02) is from last year set '41072 - Naida's Spa Secret', there's a simillar one (13392pb01) on current year sets.

Thanks for letting me know. I had a look at your links and they were very usefull?

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

Really impressive! 

I've never seen a lego aquarium!