If they do it with individual fish why not a whole aquarium? Sort of gross I guess but would be interesting to look at and could be very beautiful.
Indistinguishable from an aquarium with live fish and plants except nothing moves. Guess you could leave the plants out of a cylindrical version and rotate the whole thing.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 24 2018 Do this with a whole aquarium full of fish. https://theevolutio...ting-fish-in-resin/ [doctorremulac3, Dec 24 2018] Robot fish are really coming along. https://www.youtube...watch?v=31E8ywyUCrwThere's always this option. [doctorremulac3, Dec 25 2018] Wow, ideas... my children could be so well-behaved...-- RayfordSteele, Dec 24 2018 "Plastination, the latest thing in childcare ... "
Would work well for the elderly, too.-- 8th of 7, Dec 24 2018 m'yeah this would be an Aquariortuary.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Dec 24 2018 I can think of a few busy corridors filled with certain people that would make a great frozen block or resin. Drop it into a large tank of water and let the fish swim around them instead. [+]-- xenzag, Dec 24 2018 It could be tricky to get all the fish arranged nicely at the same time. However, there is another option.
Acrylamide plus bis-acrylamide are water-soluble, and can be polymerized into a crystal-clear gel using a light- activated catalyst. So, simply dissolve the acrylamide/bis/catalyst in the aquarium water (about 8-10% should do it). The fish will probably survive this for a few minutes. Do this under red light. Then, when the fish are all in a nice position, fire a powerful xenon flash and - gadulka! - you have your freeze-framed aquarium.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 24 2018 Ok, figured it out.
1- Get the fish and plants pre cast, they have a lot of them on line.
2- Put the plastic encased plants in place in the gravel.
3- Pour your first layer of resin to cover the gravel. Let harden.
4- Pour your second layer of resin to the level where you want your first fish to be "swimming". When it hardens, put your fish or fishes in place on top of that layer.
5- Pour the next layer of resin encasing the fish you just placed, then place more fishes on top of that layer when it hardens and so on.
Since the resin encasing the individual fish is the same as the resin of the entire "resinarium", the boundary between the block each individual fish is encased in and the resin pour around it will be invisible.
This would allow each fish to be carefully placed in the position you want and eliminate the possibility that one non-cooperative fish might make a funny face or something when you kill it with the powerful xenon flash.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 24 2018 Hope PETA never takes over, I'd probably be brought up for crimes against the animal world for even thinking of this. OK, all fish must die a natural death while being sang to after living a long, prosperous and fulfilled life.
ATTENTION ARTIST WITH A SENSE OF THE MACABRE: Doesn't have to be just fish. You could get some kind of Hieronymus Bosch style diorama of crazy things all hanging out together. You know, fish filling up a little car at the gas station, another flying a toy helicopter, a squirrel bowling.
Eh, it's creepy enough with the dead fish. That's probably pushing it.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 24 2018 The problem with that approach, [doc] is that there will inevitably be a difference in refractive index between the pre-embedded fish and plants, and the remainder of the resin. As a result, you'll create the effect of numerous fish and plants, each trapped in its own ice cube, hovering strangely in an otherwise empty tank.
When they embed things like insects (and fish, I guess) in resin, they pour half the resin, then wait for it to set to the gel state. Then they put the embeddee on top, and pour on more resin, made to exactly the same composition as the first lot. Having identical resins, and the fact that the first layer is not fully set before the second is added, largely avoids the refractive index problem. Even so, if you look sideways at an embedded insect, you will often see the discontinuity between the two resin pours.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 24 2018 Can the insect see the discontinuity too ?-- 8th of 7, Dec 24 2018 //Having identical resins, and the fact that the first layer is not fully set before the second is added, largely avoids the refractive index problem.//
Thought I made it clear that would be how this was done.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 24 2018 Yes, it's clear, but there's still a visible discontinuity ...-- 8th of 7, Dec 24 2018 Have them dipped in the first layer rather than embedded in a cube so any discontinuity is concealed by the contours of the object.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 24 2018 Yes, but Cubes are good ...-- 8th of 7, Dec 24 2018 Ah - I thought you were buying in pre-embedded fish in their own resin blocks. Apologies.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 24 2018 Just showing an example of how the fish looked in resin, no worries.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 24 2018 Just showing an example of how the fish looked in resin, no worries.
That being said, no matter how visible the delineation between original casting of the specimen and the overall casting, I think the main critiques would be about having all these dead creatures arranged as decorations.
Although museums have dioramas of dead, stuffed wild animals and nobody complains. At least a museum in San Francisco does. Lions, tigers, elephants, all as dead as Caesar and stuffed like pillows. Hell, they put dead flayed humans on display. Damn it, I'm defending my dead fish dioramas.
I take back everything I said about this being creepy. This could be really cool.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 24 2018 You could really unsettle someone who had one of these, by carefully drilling out one large and one small fish, refilling both holes with matching resin, but embedding (in one of the holes) a similar large fish with the tail of a small fish protruding from its mouth.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 25 2018 Or just drilling them all out and orienting them towards the person like they're looking at him.
There's a variation of this that I'm not sure is worth posting.
Have the specimens dipped in plastic, carefully balanced with measured boyancy so they float upright at a particular level, then circulate them around the tank with a cyclonic water path.
You'd have to somehow streamline the rear of the fish so it was less resistant to the water flow than the front lest they "swim" backwards but presumably if you had the time to do something like this you could figure something out. Open the gills up maybe.
By the way, if somebody wanted to put a little work into it and have these now available robot fish be able to recharge somehow, perhaps going into their little castles at night, we could be looking at a very small revolution, that of robots replacing fish in a few aquariums.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 25 2018 // robots replacing fish //
<Obi-Wan>
<Jedi hand gesture/>
"These aren't the Dorys you're looking for ..."
</Obi-Wan>-- 8th of 7, Dec 25 2018 //robots replacing fish in a few aquariums// I'd hake to sea that happen. But clearly you dance to the tuna of a different drummer.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 25 2018 That's because he needs his herring aid to hear the music.-- 8th of 7, Dec 25 2018 It would be pleasing to have (but probably quite difficult to implement) a half-open treasure chest, with a stream of frozen bubbles rising up through the resin.-- mitxela, Dec 27 2018 Cast the treasure chest, with air supply, into the resin. Once fully polymerized, drill down to it, then polish the resulting bore to a smooth finsh. Fill it with a liquid with a suitable refractive index, then turn on the air. Et viola ! Bubbles ...
Or cast a preformed transparent tube into the resin for the full depth.-- 8th of 7, Dec 27 2018 // Then, when the fish are all in a nice position, fire a powerful xenon flash and - gadulka! - you have your freeze-framed aquarium. //
I'm not sure whether this would work for [Maxwell's] acrylamide-bis- acrylamide mix; could you wait for just one fish to be in a nice position and only shoot xenon through that specific column of water?
Repeating this for all other fish and finally shooting one last burst of xenon all over the aquarium would give you more individual freedom over the fish's positions.
As a side note; this is my first annotation, and I worry that I'm doing this all wrong.-- Wilcooo, Dec 28 2018 You're polite, thoughtful and intelligent, so yea, you're doing it all wrong.
Kidding, you're fine. Welcome to the club.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 28 2018 ... which is a metre-long bog-oak shillelagh with a big spike driven through the business end.
// I worry that I'm doing this all wrong. //
Relax; if you do, there's no shortage of people to explain in excruciating detail exactly how and why you're wrong, correct your spelling and grammar, criticize your use of language, point out any technical errors or omissions, cast aspersions on your ancestry, education and personal habits, and generally insult and demean you.
It's like a fraternity initiation ritual, except it never stops.
// only shoot xenon through that specific column of water? //
The problem there is that the column created probably isn't going to be securely anchored to anything, and may also undergo a change in density. Any small movement of the remaining liquid, even thermal convection, will then be enough to displace it from the chosen position, spoiling the effect.
Solidifying the whole mass of material simultaneously does guarantee fixing the relative positions of the objects within the resultant block.-- 8th of 7, Dec 28 2018 Welcome, [wilcooo]. Don't mind [8th of 7]; His bark is worse than his thorns, splinters and saprophytic fungus.-- pertinax, Dec 28 2018 // worry that I'm doing this all wrong.// 8th offers a free 'correction' service. He gets a lot of satisfaction from this type of thing.-- xenzag, Dec 28 2018 Nonsense. Administering random, violent beatings is no more nor less than our moral duty.-- 8th of 7, Dec 28 2018 random, halfbakery