My Fun Fish Tank Product Review

A few months ago my sons came running into my bedroom begging me to buy them a self cleaning fish tank, which only cost $14.99. I must say the words "self cleaning" and "$14.99" perked my interest because really the only reason why someone doesn't want to buy a fish is because of the nasty cleaning of the tank and rocks. So when my boys said self cleaning, my curiosity got the best of me.

It was such a little amount of money and after watching the youtube video to the right I thought it may just work. So I bit the bullet and bought the tank and a nice little gold fish and teeny tiny snail to go along with it.

After watching the above youtube video I actually thought the world had finally created a self cleaning fish tank. I mean we have found the cure to how many diseases, created the internet, developed electric cars, and now have Segway tours for in the cities... Of course we would eventually invent the self cleaning fish tank. WRONG THINK AGAIN!!

My children were very excited when their brand new $14.99 fish tank arrived at the front door. After the arrival of the fish tank, we loaded into the car and made a trip to the store and diligently picked out the perfect gold fish and snail to place inside the tank. Which by the way was an agonizing hour and half of staring at the same 5 fish tanks and debating which orange fish was best.

After our exciting adventure to the pet store we came home and began setting up our fish tank. It wasn't anything special. The tank was made out of cheap plastic. It came with a very small bag of rocks which did NOT cover the entire bottom of the tank, and a flimsy green sea plant like thing. Basically we got what we paid for. The tank had a spout that came out to the side where I assumed all the magic happened when cleaning the tank.

Oh and I almost forgot the amazing LED light that comes with the tank so you can light your tank up in the dark. Our light never worked so we never had the chance to experience the wonder of the lit tank in a dark room.

We filled the tank up with distilled water and placed "Goldie" (yes I know such an original name that my boys came up with) and "Rocky the Snail" in their new home.

A few days later the tank began to look cloudy and had a slight smell to it so my husband and I decided it was time to finally test the self cleaning abilities of this fish tank. As per the directions we removed Goldie and placed him in another bowl so we would not disturb him and began filling the tank up with new water. This is the when the magic is supposed to happen. The commercial shows the tank being filled up with new clean water and pushing the old and yucky water out of the spigot which sticks out to the side.

When putting new water in the tank it instantly stirred up any of the muck at the bottom of the tank and the muck began spiraling in the tank like a whirlpool. So my husband and I tried to pour less water in at a time and at a much slower speed but no matter what we did the muck continued to float around instead of leaving through the outer spigot. After pouring new water in for about 15 minutes or so we finally gave up and decided that it was good enough. The water did look cleaner, it was less foggy, and the smell was bearable again but there was still a lot of muck in the tank. We returned Goldie to his "kinda of" clean home and proceeded to do the same thing over the next two months.

With each cleaning the water was more foggier and smellier than the time before because each time the tank was supposed to be "self cleaning" itself it was actually leaving a lot of the mess behind. The tank never truly got cleaned after we put Goldie in the tank on day one. It was just bearable for the next two months.

Rocky died in the first two weeks.... he was dearly missed and Goldie joined him two months later. Needless to say we did not buy another fish to place in our "self cleaning" fish tank.

The "My Fun Fish Tank" is the equivalent of buying a fish bowl and filling the fish bowl with water to the top until it overflows. Some of the dirty water will leave and some of the clean water will stay. The tank will look cleaner than when you started the process but it will never truly be clean again and with each cleaning it will get worse and worse.

Fortunately the "My Fun Fish Tank" is very cheap and I didn't expect much so the pure joy on my children's faces was worth the money to me. Even though the joy on their faces only lasted for one entire day before they moved onto the next new thing .

Goldie and I grew close to one another since I had become his main caretaker after the newness of the fish wore off. If I'm being honest... I did enjoy watching some of the old and stinky water leave through the spigot when I cleaned the tank even though it didn't really clean the tank.

I fear that Goldie's last thoughts were about the fish muck he was breathing in and how his own feces killed him because his darn self cleaning fish tank didn't get the job done.

Keep your $14.99 and buy a cheap plastic fish bowl.