When you want to keep fish in your house, you will require an aquarium to keep them. Historically, glass has been used for the purpose of making aquarium. Glass aquariums are also called glass fish tanks. Keeping fishes in a glass fish tanks is very a popular hobby today. Although fishes have been kept by men for centuries, either for food of fun, fish tanks are a very recent development. The world’s first sustainable glass fish tank was developed in 1805. However, innovations in the filtering systems gave a tremendous boost to the home fish keeping hobby in the mid 1960s.

The fish tank can be made up of either a tempered glass or a plate glass. The glass framed tanks of the yester years has been replaced by glass framed tanks. A tempered glass is a hot and cool treated glass. The process of tempering leads to lightweight and super strong glass. This glass shatters into hundreds of pieces when broken. On the other hand, plate glass, which is a thicker and heavier glass, tends to crack at the impact. Plate glass is commonly used in smaller aquariums whilst the tempered glass is used in larger aquariums in order to withstand the weight of the large volume of water. It is widely common for the nowadays for the glass fish tanks to have a minimum of a tempered glass bottom with the four sides made up of plate glass.

These fish tanks are readily available in stores in all sizes. They can also be brought online, though they shipping and handling charges might be high. However, most glass fish tanks are generally rectangular in shape as glass is hard to manipulate. Thus, searching for an odd shaped fish tank made up of glass would be futile. Since glass tends to loose heat easily, ensure that your fish tank has a heater and hood to control the temperature. In case you want to customize your fish tank you can build it yourself.

Always ensure that the fish tank environment is self-sustaining. Your tank requires some amount of maintenance and cleaning. Putting a power filter and regular changing of the cartridge would ensure lesser requirement of cleaning. When choosing a fish tank or making it yourself, keep in mind that for the same volume of water, the tank that is wider and longer is better than the ones that are taller. This is because a wider and a longer fish tank would provide a larger water surface area thereby promoting oxygen exchange that is beneficial to the fishes in the tank.

Glass fish tanks are scratch resistant and offer clear view of the fish. These fish tanks are cheaper than the ones made up of acrylic and are stronger. They are easily found in most fish or pet store. Additionally, these tanks don’t need much brace support. The glass of the fish tank doesn’t yellow over time. There are however, some disadvantages of the fish tank made up of glass. The most obvious is the limited shape design. These tanks are heavy are not insulated, resulting in loss of heat. Also, they are prone to cracks, though these can be repaired by use of silicone.