1st Impressions

MyReef 3D Aquarium is an application that really has to be experienced to really appreciate.  It is gorgeous!  While there is a light free version, the on-sale $0.99 version is well worth the price.  It has some of the most incredible visuals of anything I have seen on the iPhone.  Options not only include selection of what fish you want in your reef, choice of background and substrate, and placement of the reef pieces, but also lets you set the volume of the sound (bubbles) and allows you to listed to a playlist while you watch your reef.

It doesn’t just stop there though.  You can “tap on the glass” to freak out your fish, feed them and watch them gather for it, have the “camera” view automatically move around the tank, or “tie” it to a chosen fish and have it follow it around.  Both landscape as well as portrait modes are supported, and you can zoom and pan around as you would expect.  Screenshots of your reef also make for great wallpaper on you lock screen.

The developers also have a second fish tank experience available.  The interface is slightly different, but the concept is the same.  It is priced at $2.99 and a free version is available.  The 3D Aquarium app is a bit more expensive, but it allows you to allows you to set up multiple tanks (three total).  Other than having multiple tanks and a slightly different interface, the most obvious difference is that (1) you cannot move reef parts around in your tank, and (2) the accelerometer acts differently.  In MyReef 3D, turning your iPhone changes from portrait to landscape.  In 3D Aquarium, it rotates your camera around in your tank.  It also seems to lack the ability to zoom and pan like MyReef 3D.

Between the two, and considering the price, I’d choose MyReef 3D over 3D Aquarium if I were only going to select one of them.  And if I were going to offer a suggestion, I love the way MyReef 3D behaves in my iPhone dock.  It would be nice if you could have a small opaque time indicator in the bottom of the screen.  It would make a great desktop clock (or even an alarm clock).  An option added to the apps that would require regular care/feeding would also turn them into more of a virtual pet application for those that like that kind of thing.  Having a timer on the playing of the playlist and/or the app as a whole would be nice as well in case you wanted to use it to go to sleep to or something.

Overall, these are both quality apps worth checking out.  They really show off the video capabilities of the iPhone.