About the Amazing Netscape Fish Cam

Tank maintenance courtesy SeaLife Aquarium Service, Silicon Valley's premiere Aquarium Service. Tell them we sent you...

Many years ago, The Economist did a feature on the Internet; back then, the mere existence of the network was cause for feature articles. This is what they had to say about the Fish Cam:

Of the two, the fish tank [Fish Cam] is actually the more profound. In its audacious uselessness—and that of thousands of ego trips like it—lie the seeds of the Internet revolution.

About the Fish Cam

The Fish Cam is now the oldest live camera site on the web. The Trojan Room Coffee Machine used to be older, but it was shut down in 2001. In its time, the Amazing Netscape Fish Cam gave rise to the likes of The Amazing Wall Cam, The Almost Amazing Turtle Cam, and many others. Try a Netscape search and see for yourself. Our fish tank was first put online by Netscape founding engineer Lou Montulli. Reliable sources say that it was online on or shortly before 13 September 1994, since the first piece of public feedback on the page was on that date.

The Fish Cam may also be the most visited live camera site on the web, with an average daily number of hits at 90,000, but we're pretty much guessing about that. Early in its history, the Fish Cam site is thought to have been the 10th most popular page on the entire Internet. It is currently in the keeping of the Javascript team.

About the Tank in Front of the Fish Cam

The original aquarium was a 90 gallon acrylic model with built-in overflow and extra sturdy top, lit with two fluorescent tubes that were removed from a desktop lighting unit in a fellow employee's office while he was out. The current aquarium is a 350 gallon custom made acrylic tank with a stylish oak base and top... and a real lighting system.

About the Fish in the Tank in Front of the Fish Cam

See the pictures on the main page. The fish eat cubes of brine shrimp and cubes of green algae. They all have their favorite foods. The puffer gobbles algae, while the angel and most of the small fish prefer shrimp.

About the Filtration System Below the Fish in the Tank in Front of the Fish Cam

Water flows over the overflow in the fish tank down to a "trickle" (or wet/dry) filter. The water trickles over bio-media in the trickle filter and collects in a sump (forty gallon tank) below it. In the sump is a series of chemical and biological filtration agents. One of them is a protein skimmer; this pumps water into a reaction chamber and mixes a lot of very small air bubbles with it. The air bubbles produce a foam that's pulled off the surface of the water by the skimmer. The foam contains dissolved organic material that is removed from the tank and thrown away. The removal of the organic material helps to keep the water quality in an optimum state for the fish. There is also an ultraviolet filter which kills small micro-organisms that tend to cause desease and parasites. After filtration the water is pumped from the sump back up into the tank, and the cycle begins again.

If you are somehow still interested, you can see the filtration system below the tank. (12 Kb JPEG Image)

What to do if the Fish Cam is Messed Up

If the Fish Cam messes up in some way (people have been known to bump the camera or otherwise obstruct its general usefulness), send us mail at fishcam@netscape.com.

The Fish Cam Secret

If you're using Netscape or Mozilla, try Ctrl-alt-F or Ctrl-option-F. (Note: may not work in all recent versions; see Bugzilla entry #25369 for details.)