Painting backgrounds

Imagine what a talented portrait painter one would have to be to paint a 3d sea scape on the back inverted so that it looked correct from the front side. Actually if some one were to come out with a stencil for that back that you could pain by number would be pretty cool. Other then that solid spray painted backs don't appeal to me especially black as I think solid painted backs look so monolithic taking away from the opportunity to add more dimension and motif to the whole aquarium, but that is just my opinion.
 
I want to paint my tank, but it brings the resell value way down =(. Not that I plan on selling it, but you never know.
 
CWO4GUNNER said:
Imagine what a talented portrait painter one would have to be to paint a 3d sea scape on the back inverted so that it looked correct from the front side. Actually if some one were to come out with a stencil for that back that you could pain by number would be pretty cool. Other then that solid spray painted backs don't appeal to me especially black as I think solid painted backs look so monolithic taking away from the opportunity to add more dimension and motif to the whole aquarium, but that is just my opinion.
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I like to have them a solid color so that when you put things in front of them,you don't have the wall to distract you.They also help hide all of the cords and filter hoses.
I understand where you are coming from though.
I have solid backgrouds on all but one of my tanks.Most of the backs of the tanks are completely covered with plants.The black background stops you from looking staight through the plants to the wall in back,IMO.
I have also thought painting and actuall underwater scene would be the best background.Too bad I have no artistic ability at all.

Jakezori said:
I want to paint my tank, but it brings the resell value way down =(. Not that I plan on selling it, but you never know.
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I would actually pay more for a tank that is already painted black,but that's just me. :)
You can also remove it if you need to.A razor blade and some elbow grease will do it.
 
i paint all mine black with a roller brush. i have painted a few while they were up and running just throw a cheap dollar store shower curtain over the top and its fine no fish has ever died because i painted a running tank and with it covered no paint can get in the tank, but again its all about paying attention to what your doing. no its not a job the kids can help with since kids and paint = huge mess :) And i have sold several painted tanks over the years and never sold them for less money because they were painted, i sold a 55G tank and stand last month i paid 35.00 for painted the back of tank black and waxed the stand then turned around and sold it on craigslist for 125.00 not bad for just the tank and stand. maybe had 2 hrs work in that project and made 90.00 profit.
 
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I've used a brush, no problem.
You still get a nice, smooth finish, even if the surface is less even than you would get with a roller or spray, because you're looking at the 'inside' of the paint - through the glass. Even touchups are invisible. (Might not be satisfactory if you can see the 'outside' of the paint, but that doesn't apply to me.)
 
You've all put my creative side to work!

I just got a 110 gallon and I have been looking for ideas, dont know what im going to do with it at this point.... what im going to put in it as far as substrate, type of fish, and most importantly the background..... Thinking cichlids?????

OK, So you got my wheels turning.......... so i started playing around with my little 10 gallon (if i screw that up, oh well) not that expensive to replace a 10 gal and not as much supplies waisted.

I have done some glass painting in the past, so i had some window paint and here is what I come up with. Just a trial tank, I think it turned out pretty nice. Hubby really likes it.

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If you wanna see more pics you can look on my website http://www.newdreamz.com/AQUARIUM.html


I'll tell you all my little secrets a little later. This pattern was so simple. Im going to try out a different type of paint on my 29gal and more of an aquatic background, we'll see how that turns out?


Can't wait to get my 110gal finished, but that will probably be a long time from now :idea:

What do you think? It is very easy to remove if you decide you dont like it or want to change it.

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Oh yea, btw, this only took me a matter of about 10 min to do, about 48 hrs of waiting to set back up ;)
 
Wow! I love it! You just did vertical lines? That's pretty creative & I'm impressed. I feel like such a boring person painting mine brown blotches now lol
 
From an artistic point of view I don't think anything can top human expression painting of an aquarium as paint goes. But I do think its time some alternatives to what we customarily have used take a great leap forward. For instance since you can already buy a virtual LED aquarium, I wonder when they will come out with LED backgrounds depicting virtual interactive underwater moving scape and scenes you can choose from, I bet even the fish would be entertained.
 
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