3D Aquarium — The great thing about having a pet is the interaction — the petting, funny expressions and playtime. So, I’m usually not too keen on the world of virtual pets and the related iPhone apps.

But, what if your pet of choice is fish? The real fascination of fish is in watching them swim, seeing them swarm at feeding time, tapping on the glass to get a reaction, or just from enjoying the peaceful sounds of gurgling water.

The 3D Aquarium app by raiX UG is a realistic pet fish experience. The app offers all the peaceful pleasures of owning an aquarium without the maintenance of cleaning the glass or maintaining proper temperatures, ph and salt levels.

3D Aquarium has many positives. The sharp colors and realistic movements of the fish and plant life are wonderful to watch. Users can set up three different aquariums — each with its own set of fish and choice of substrate (sand, rocks, etc), background, plant life, and fish.

While watching your new pets, you can also configure options such as sound, light, camera, and tap to feed or tap to chase fish away can further customize the aquarium. By default the Auto Camera is off, which offers a full view of the aquarium that can be rotated with the accelerometer just by tilting your device. Turn Auto Camera on for a close up view of your fish that follows your pets automatically as they roams about the tank.

The only downside to this aquarium app is the limits — currently only six fish and one crab per aquarium. I would love to have the ability to add more. I suppose it’s rather unhealthy for the fish to be too crowded, but the whole point of virtual reality is pushing past the “reality.”

The other caveat with 3D Aquarium is that you need to remember to set your device not to sleep if you plan on passively enjoying your aquarium. I set up mine up the desk using an iPhone stand and my device turned itself off a few minutes after I tired of feeding the fish.

3D Aquarium by raiX UG delivers on what most would expect from the aquarium experience. If you enjoy the calming effects of gazing into an aquarium and watching fish glide through the gentle currents of relatively calm waters then you’ll enjoy the 3D Aquarium app for quite some time.

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category: Editor's Picks, Entertainment