A couple of years ago, graphic designer Kelsey Kronmiller spotted a Super Mario Bros. themed fish tank making the internet rounds. It inspired her to make her own, but she had to wait until she had her own place. She eventually did and obtained a 55 gallon aquarium from a friend, and the end result looks like the happiest aquarium home a fish could want. She based her design on World 8-1 in Super Mario Bros. and put a lot of work into the project.

She knew she needed to include multiple hiding places for the fish who would be moving in, so she constructed large and small castles and some pipes. She used a combination of 2×4 and 2×1 brown LEGO bricks for the castles and mixed them with red ones since her local store didn’t have all the brown bricks she needed. Improvising! She bought the bricks by the cup at the LEGO store and went through approximately eight large cups and four small ones. All those tiny black stripes on the LEGO castles are carefully applied strips of vinyl.

Besides the LEGO castles, the aquarium features spray-painted PVC pipes, a paper backdrop, a vinyl flag, and 100 vinyl cloud stickers that she cut out by hand. I salute her ability to do tedious work.

Take a look at the rest of the pieces and parts that went into the build.

The aquarium build has been completed, and Kronmiller only needs to put in the fish. She’s planning to add Electric Blue Jack Dempsey fish, a Dinosaur Eel, and freshwater Butterflyfish. I hope she creates a video of the fish darting around to music from Super Mario Bros.

HT: Gizmodo