11 Best Fish Bowls (Review) In 2020

Fish bowls seem like the last thing that you’d ever expect to see affected by modern home designs. But here we are—a Hollywood Hills-looking fish tank that gives you a unique, frame-by-frame view into their little worlds.

Umbra offers the ability to get these in packs of four, which cut down the already affordable price per unit. The thing is, since the tanks themselves can’t connect, there’s no real reason to stack them on top of each other, as the design allows. That’s just going to make feeding time more of a hassle. On top of that, they advertise the capacity of Umbra FishHotel Mini Aquarium as being two gallons each, but in reality, the tank volume is 1.8 gallons. It’s nothing major, but they really should clear up the confusion.

Koller Products Panaview Globe Fish Bowl is a simple, standard fish bowl, and that’s what’s excellent about it. Koller makes a lot of fish bowls, but this basic bowl is designed with a completely shatterproof plastic resin that your kids won’t be able to destroy. Even if they stand on it. It’s odd though, because it boasts that strength, but if left in direct sunlight, the plastic is prone to warping after a few hours. You really have to leave it somewhere that it’s not going to get too much sun throughout the day.

The wide bottom design gives plenty of surface contact, ensuring a weighted position on your table or desk. This reduces the possibility of it tipping over, and with a gallon of water inside, it’s not going to be easy to just knock off. When this shows up at your door, it’s in a sheet of plastic, but it’s open-sided. Your bowl has a little bit of dust on it, which really doesn’t give a wow factor on that crystal clear quality that Koller talks about. It’s an inconvenience at best, but doesn’t do much for the aesthetics right out of the box. Wash this with warm water, and avoid abrasive brushes when possible. For some must-have products for fish tank owners, check out our guide to the best aquarium air pumps.

It’s pretty cool to just imagine having an aquarium on your wall, isn’t it? CNZ Wall Mounted Fish Bowl is a unique fish bowl that is easy to mount, but the mounting bracket or nail that you use is visible through the acrylic design. Hang it slightly above eye level to counteract this. Speaking of that acrylic, it’s designed to be unbreaking under all normal circumstances, like dropping and cleaning. While it’s definitely inexpensive compared to some other glass alternatives, acrylic is prone to showing scratches, so do be careful during cleaning.

Perhaps one of the best features about this fish bowl is the ability to easily feed your fish. There are some wall mount fish bowls where you have to take it down every time you want to feed them, and that’s not good to knock the fish around like that. Those same designs also splashed water on the drywall. Thankfully, CNZ had the foresight to make this easily accessible. Cleaning is fairly easy. Algae doesn’t really cling to acrylic the way it clings to glass, so drop in some soap and use a soft bristle brush, and you’re good to go. While it can hold a tiny bit over a gallon, because of the shape and available swimming space, this is really only good for one fish. Maybe two, but I’d just keep one in it. Our guide to the best aquarium filter features some useful equipment for aquarium owners, so check them out.

Plants and fish living together, right in your office—you love to sea it (see what I did there?). You can support plant life as well as marine life in this convenient, wall mounted fish bowl. It’s not just easy to mount, but it gives you two separate options for painted walls and rougher textures as well. You get both instruction options and mounting brackets available in your package.

Sweetsea Hanging Wall Mounted Aquaponic Tank, the 0.5 gallon unit, which is the one we’re focusing on, is basically perfect right out of the box. The thing is, the one-gallon model has had reported leaking. Sweetsea is quick to fix the issue, but it’s still something that you don’t want to have to deal with when you make a new purchase.

Betta fish can be hard to care for. They’re normally a chore, but this tank gives you a bit of a break from constantly worrying about them. Penn Plax made Aquaponic Betta Fish Tank to support their life, (and the life of goldfish as well) by using the plant to absorb the waste produced by fish, and then recycling it into oxygen in the water to upkeep the delicate balance of their habitat. It’s why the entire unit is perfectly measured out at 1.4 gallons, to give a good ratio.

While they get that spot-on, they don’t even disclose what material this Betta fish tank is made out of, which can be a problem when it comes to cleaning. We just say to use a simple plastic bristle brush with a soft edge, so you won’t have to worry about scratching or damaging your tank.

Fish bowls and marine fish tanks can get pretty gross. It doesn’t take long for algae to start forming, and the water gets murky Koller Products 3-Gallon Globe Bowl keeps the exterior crystal clear, so you can actually see what’s going on instead of trying to peer in through dirty glass. Speaking of which, it’s not made of glass, but a shatterproof resin material. It’s good, but given the fact that this is a heavier, three-gallon fish bowl, it’s still able to crack and break if you drop it, it’s just less likely to do so than glass.

There were a lot of reports of this arriving dented or scratched during transit. We decided to test it anyway, and came up with one small dent in the side. It was easy to pop back out, but it’s still not something you should have to do with a brand new purchase. One good thing is that it’s a solid design, meaning they don’t glue two halves of a bowl together. This means there’s no chance of it leaking right out of the package. It’s easy to clean, and with a wide surface contact point, it’s not going to tip over easily.

EcoSphere Closed Aquatic Ecosystem is less a fish bowl (because, well, you can’t put fish in it) and more of a science project for the edge of your home office desk. It’s a bit pricey, but whether you go with the small pod or tall pod, this is a fascinating, 100% self-sustaining marine ecosystem in a jar.

You just put it on its base (which spins) and let nature do the rest. There are detailed instructions with your purchase to ensure you’re creating a hospitable temperature and amount of light to sustain this in your home or office space. Built with synthetic gravel, live marine shrimp, algae, and wrapped up in a hand blown glass container/pod, you’ll get to watch this grow day by day on the edge of your desk. Algae grows fast, so don’t miss it.

We’re back with some more Koller fish bowls, because how can you not love them? They’re simple, they get the job done, and they tread lightly on your wallet. After testing, this is the one that I personally kept.

Koller Products bettaTank 2 comes in a two-gallon size (no other variables), which can support about four or five small fish comfortably. The octagonal shape of this fish bowl is both a blessing and a curse, because for one, it makes it basically impossible to tip over. You’d have to shove the whole thing off of your table or desk before you can just accidentally tilt it.

I like it when I can get something I need without spending a lot of money. I think everyone does, and Koller Products Crystal Clear Fish Bowl is basically the living embodiment of making something work on a shoestring budget. It’s wildly inexpensive, meaning if you came here looking for multiple fish bowls to buy, you’ve just hit the motherlode.

Koller guarantees a complete 100% satisfaction rating on this bowl, and even though it comes in pretty pristine packaging with no dents, that’s still good to have under your belt. The fully shatterproof design is still prone to scratches, since it is plastic, but that’s to be expected.

It’s a glass fish bowl, what more do you expect? Well, Anchor Hocking actually did a little 180 on the standard fish bowl design. They included a flat base at the bottom of the bowl to make it much harder to tip over, even with the slightly increased lip size around the rim of the bowl.

That’s a major plus in our book, and since the Anchor Hocking Drum Bowl is under 10” tall, it’s enough of a countermeasure to actually make a difference. The fact that it’s made of heavy duty glass is both good and bad. We’ve been reviewing a lot of acrylic bowls on this guide, because they’re inexpensive and relatively easy to maintain. They’re not going to break if they get knocked over. Glass will break, but in this instance, it’s heavy duty enough that a simple fall from a few feet up shouldn’t shatter it.

Hanging your fish bowl on a wall is pretty awesome, and it looks great. Outgeek took to their own design, and while Outgeek Wall Fish Flower Pot and Aquarium is not the highest ranking wall fish bowl on our list, it gets the job done very similarly. You can support marine plant life and fish life at the same time here, which is a major bonus. While you’re not going to get the plant with your purchase, you do get some colorful rocks to make the space pop a bit.

Outgeek faces the same problem most acrylic, wall hanging fish bowls do: glue. Sometimes the glue that holds the half-circle to the backing comes undone due to excessive heat while shipping, or a variety of other factors. It happens, but Outgeek is aware of the issue and are quick to replace the entire fishing bowl, no questions asked.