If you want to keep tropical or marine fish but you don’t have much space to play with, a corner aquarium might be the perfect solution for you. But if you’re new to fishkeeping, how do you know what corner fish tank is the best to choose? What’s a safe location for your aquarium? How do you clean a corner fish tank?
In this guide, we answer those questions for you. And, we’ve taken time out to review four of the best corner fish tanks on the market today.
What’s a corner fish tank?
A corner fish tank is a wedge-shaped aquarium that has a curved glass front. Corner aquariums are usually made from acrylic, although we recommend you choose a glass tank, as these are generally sturdier and provide a clearer view of your fish. You can keep either marine or freshwater species in a corner tank.
What size are corner aquariums?
Corner tanks are generally smaller than regular rectangular or tall tanks, typically around 75 gallons or less. Thanks to their small size, corner tanks tend to be a little less expensive than regular ones. Sometimes they even come with kits with everything you need to get started!
How expensive are corner fish tanks?
The price of a typical 10 to 15-gallon corner tank that would suit a beginner starts at around forty dollars, but you might pay as much as 200 dollars for a 75-gallon tank.
If you choose a tank that has a hood with lighting and comes complete with a stand or cabinet, you can expect to pay a lot more, typically from 400 dollars upward.
Why choose a corner aquarium?
A corner aquarium can be the perfect solution if you’d love a decent-sized fish tank, but you don’t have much space to play with. If you have a dark corner in your home that’s crying out for something to brighten it up, an aquarium teeming with brightly colored, thriving fish is ideal.
Our Top Corner Aquarium Reviews
Now that you know a little more about corner fish tanks, check out these product reviews. Click the in-text links to find out even more about each product, and place an order when you find the perfect corner tank for your home.
Tetra Bubbling LED Aquarium Kit
If you’re looking for a cute, low-maintenance tank that will fit neatly into a corner on a small table or countertop, this offering from Tetra is ideal.
The Tetra Bubbling LED Aquarium comes as a kit. The tank is hexagonal, measuring only 6.5 x 6.5 x 8 inches, and has a 1-gallon capacity. This neat nano tank includes a bubbler, filtration system, and LED lights, and the canopy has a handy feeding hole.
Although this acrylic tank would make a cute home for some brightly colored shrimp or snails, it’s too small for fish, so keep that in mind as you shop.
What We Like:
- Small enough to fit in any corner
- Comes as a complete kit
- Low-maintenance
- Inexpensive
Room for Improvement:
- Too small for fish
Tetra ColorFusion Starter Aquarium Kit
If you want a slightly larger tank that would suit a betta fish, a few small tetras, or rasboras, the Tetra ColorFusion Starter Aquarium Kit may be a good choice for you.
This aquarium measures 6.88 x 12.5 x 12.9 inches and is a most attractive half-moon shape. This tank will fit into a corner on a counter or sturdy table, providing perfect 180-degree viewing of your aquascape and fish.
The kit has a bubble curtain that automatically cycles through a brilliant display of LED lights to light up your room. Both the lights, bubbling disc, and filtration system are powered by an ultra-reliable Tetra Whisper pump. The filter is an essential element of the kit that keeps your aquarium clean and helps maintain a healthy environment for your fish. There’s also a feeding hole in the aquarium lid.
Unfortunately, the kit doesn’t include a heater, so you’ll need to invest in one if you plan on keeping tropical fish. However, temperate species like White Cloud Mountain minnows would be fine without one.
What We Like:
- Small enough to fit in any corner
- Comes as a complete kit
- Low-maintenance
- Inexpensive
Room for Improvement:
Juwel Trigon 190 LED
If you’re looking for a corner aquarium that creates a beautiful focal point and feature in your room, consider the Juwel Trigon 190 LED corner aquarium.
It comes with its purpose-built stand that doubles as a handy cupboard, offering plenty of space for your fish food, medications, and more. As you would expect for the price of this unit, you get a five-stage filtration system, state-of-the-art energy-saving lighting unit, and an integral heater.
The tank has a 50-gallon capacity, so there’s plenty of space for a good selection of tropical marine or freshwater fish. There are four cabinet colors to choose from, enabling you to select a tank that perfectly complements your home decor color scheme. You can also choose different lighting units, depending on whether you want to keep marine or freshwater fish.
Basically, all you’ll need to buy in addition to the fish tank are your chosen decorations, substrate, plants, and fish.
What We Like:
- Superb quality
- Comes as a complete kit
- Glass, so excellent clarity of viewing
- Warranty
Room for Improvement:
Koller Products Tropical Aquaview Corner Aquarium Starter Kit
- FUN and REWARDING: Are you looking to buy an aquarium for your family? Owning an aquarium can be a really fun and rewarding experience and an ideal way to teach your child the responsibility of pet…
- DAZZLING COLORS: Energy-efficient LED lighting with 7 dazzling color selections to brightly illuminate your fish, choose daylight white, blue, green, amber, aqua, purple, or red.
- COMPLETE FILTRATION: Powerful internal power filter cleans and purifies aquarium water at a flow rate of 25 gallons per hour effectively removing organic pollutants. Uses Koller Products XS…
The Koller Products Tropical Aquaview Corner Aquarium Starter Kit is another small tank that makes an ideal starter setup for the corner of a kid’s bedroom or your office desktop.
This neat tank comes with a full hood that features energy-efficient, multi-colored LED lighting that perfectly shows off the brilliant colors of your fish and brings out the vibrancy of plants, too.
The aquarium is made of impact-resistant plastic that offers a crystal-clear view of your fish. The tank’s seamless construction eliminates the risk of leaks you often get from aquariums with seams. The water in your tank is kept super-clean by the internal power filter that gives you an impressive 20 GPH flow rate.
The compact aquarium measures 9.4 x 11.4 x 8.3 inches and has a 2.5-gallon capacity. For your peace of mind and just in case, the tank comes with a two-year limited warranty.
What We Like:
- Comes as a complete kit
- Includes limited warranty
- 7-color LED lighting unit
Room for Improvement:
- Plastic may eventually become scratched, spoiling clarity
Where should you put a corner aquarium?
So now that you’ve chosen your perfect corner tank, where is the best place to keep it in your home?
Obviously, you’ll be putting it in the corner of a room, or maybe on the corner of a counter or desktop. But there are a few very important considerations you’ll need to make when deciding on the best place for your tank.
A firm foundation
Wherever you decide to put your fish tank, it’s vital to remember the tank will be very heavy once it’s filled with substrate, decorations, and fish.
Unless you bought a small corner tank for your desk, you’ll need a proper aquarium stand for it. Domestic furniture is generally not sturdy enough to carry the weight of a tank and its contents, whereas purpose-built aquarium stands are.
Level ground
Make sure the corner you choose for your tank has a level surface so the tank and stand won’t tip over.
Sunlight
Be very careful that you don’t choose to put your fish tank in a corner of the room that gets lots of direct sunlight during the day.
There are two reasons for that:
1. Temperature shock
If you put your tank where the sun shines on it, the water can quickly become far too warm for the fish, potentially causing a condition called temperature shock.
All fish can be affected by temperature shock.
All fish species need an optimum water temperature in their environments, and that temperature must remain stable. If the water is too warm or too cold, the fish will become stressed. Stress weakens the fish’s immune system, leaving them vulnerable to diseases, and prolonged exposure to an inappropriate water temperature can ultimately kill your fish.
Hot and cold spots in the tank can also cause problems. You can prevent that by placing your heater next to the filter outlet so the water flow carries the heat around the aquarium. Put a thermometer at the farthest end of the tank from the heater. That way, you can monitor the temperature to make sure it’s equal throughout the tank.
2. Algae
Like every plant species, algae need sunlight to grow and spread. The more sunlight that hits your tank, the quicker the algae will proliferate, eventually cloaking the viewing pane, ornaments, and plants in a thick, green blanket.
Peace and quiet
Many fish species are sensitive to noise and vibration, and if the tank is in a very busy location, the fish can easily become stressed. So, keep the tank well away from doorways, areas with heavy foot traffic, televisions, sound systems, and the like.
Electrical sockets
Remember that you’ll need to plug in the lighting unit, filter, air pump, and heater. So, you need to put your tank somewhere with easy access to electrical sockets.
At the same time, do take care that the water from the tank won’t splash onto the sockets! Ideally, you want the sockets to be slightly off to the side of the tank rather than directly behind it.
How do I clean a corner fish tank?
Essentially, correctly maintaining a corner tank entails the same work as looking after a regular square or rectangular aquarium.
Keeping the water clean is of paramount importance. You’ll need to carry out partial water changes every week, rinse the filter media in dirty tank water once a month or so, and replace spent media as directed by the manufacturer’s guidelines.
As part of your water change regimen, you should deep-clean the substrate with an aquarium vacuum.
Cleaning the viewing pane
The main difference with cleaning a corner fish tank is that, depending on the style of aquarium you choose, the viewing pane on a corner aquarium is curved.
That means using a large, square algae magnet is not going to work because it won’t run flush with the glass. However, if you use a small, circular algae magnet, that’ll work much better. The main drawback is that the cleaning process takes a little longer than it would with a larger magnet.
If you have an acrylic tank, make sure you use an acrylic-safe algae magnet so that you don’t scratch your tank.
Is a glass or acrylic corner aquarium best?
Larger corner aquariums are usually made of glass, whereas smaller tanks are typically acrylic or plastic. So, what’s the difference?
Cost
Glass tanks are usually cheaper, depending on the size of the tank and what comes with it. Why is that so? Because glass tanks are more popular, more are produced, and that drives the price down.
That being said, if you want a very large tank, around 150 gallons or more, acrylic tanks are often cheaper. That’s because glass is heavier than acrylic and is more expensive to transport.
Scratch resistance
Glass is easily the winner when it comes to scratch resistance. That’s why we recommend glass to beginners, as it’s too easy to scratchy acrylic. So, if you have little kids who like to touch the viewing pane or a curious kitty, acrylic is best-avoided.
Tank weight
Glass is much heavier than acrylic. In fact, a glass tank is up to ten times as heavy as its acrylic or plastic equivalent.
That’s not a problem if you have a very small corner tank that sits neatly on a countertop or desk. However, if you opt for a large corner aquarium, the weight of the setup will have a massive influence on where you can safely put it.
So, if the weight of the tank is important to you, then we recommend that you choose an acrylic or plastic tank over a glass one.
Aquarium design
Glass is more difficult to shape than acrylic, which is why the majority of glass aquariums are rectangular, square, or hexagonal.
Curved glass also bends light, distorting the size of the fish when viewed from the outside of your tank. Acrylic doesn’t bend light as much as glass, meaning your fish appear truer to life than they would in a glass tank.
Safety in the home
Accidents can happen, especially if you have small kids or pets in your home, as well as a fish tank. If that sounds like your home setup, an acrylic tank is the safest option for you.
Acrylic is more impact-resistant than glass that can chip or even smash in the event of a bump. That said, prolonged exposure to UV-light can damage acrylic, making it brittle.
Clarity of viewing pane
One big plus point of a glass tank is that the clarity of the viewing pane is generally better than that of acrylic. Acrylic can become yellow over time, leaving your view cloudy. Glass, however, remains clear, no matter how much light it’s exposed to.
In conclusion
A small corner aquarium can be a wonderful choice for your home if you want to get into keeping fish, but you don’t have much space at your disposal.
There are some nice small corner tanks you can use to create a focal point on a desk or kitchen countertop, and a mini setup like that can be perfect for a kid’s bedroom. We hope you find our guide helpful in your search for a corner tank!