Tank Background: Two Ideas

[mellowvision]

thing is, you really can beat spray paint. it's a pain to remove in a hurry, but also scratches easily, and is really easy to get inside the tank during even a careful application. plus fumes and chemicals... I like painting, but it's not a great solution.

 

[cweg71]

I prefer to use a fabric background, velcroed to the tank. You can get many colors and patterns from a fabric store for cheap.

 

[dundadundun]

i used 2.5% window tint on my 50 and you can't see a single thing through it. it's black as night and holding well. no bubbles per mellows soak and squeegee instructions above and a 6' roll is only about $11. it definitely beats black spray paint imo. one thing i definitely want to try though is rolling on the exact same paint i have on the wall behind the tank. i think it would match, yet offset the room like glossy trim or tone on tone.

 

[H2Ogal]

Just a quick update: When filling the tank, I had a problem with foamy water/bacteria from my sand substrate and had to fill/drain the tank six or seven times. Needless to say, the foamcore caught a lot of drips and splashes over the back rim — but the only way I knew was that I could see a very faint darkening of the center of the board under the area protected by the tape. I could not feel any dampness anywhere, and there were no drips below the tank. (I have an open iron stand.)

Now that the water has cleared completely, I can see some faintly lighter streaks where I believe the water soaked into the front (tank) side of the posterboard/card stock. There are also some odd, darker squiggly lines where water may have been running between the glass and board.

I had to look closely to see all that, and it's not enough to bother me and will likely be obscured by plants/algae over time, so I have no plans to replace the foamcore. All in all, I'm pretty happy with its performance.

 

[H2Ogal]

i used 2.5% window tint on my 50 and you can't see a single thing through it. it's black as night and holding well. no bubbles per mellows soak and squeegee instructions above and a 6' roll is only about $11. it definitely beats black spray paint imo. one thing i definitely want to try though is rolling on the exact same paint i have on the wall behind the tank. i think it would match, yet offset the room like glossy trim or tone on tone.

I think auto/window tints are used pretty often with success, but I didn't want anything that permanent on the glass — and I really didn't want to have to deal with air bubbles again. Blech. Fighting with the contact paper has put me off anything that has to be adhered to the glass.

I think that matching the tank background to the wall color is a really interesting idea. Be sure to post some pictures if you ever do that! I suppose it would work best with blue colors, but you never know.

 

[fishorama]

I've heard of using foamcore before. I like the impermanance of it & the rigidity. I'm too indecisive for paint, lol. Fabric is ok but my HOB filters catch on it sometimes, a PITA.