what kind of background?
- Thread starter cdub
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No one has ever liked this idea to my knowledge, although I've brought it up several times........
The purpose of a background is not to draw attention to itself, but to draw attention to the aquascaping and inhabitants (afterall, thats where your money goes). Bright interesting backgrounds take attention away from what's living in your tank. Black painted backgrounds are good, but if you have fish that have black in their coloring (even a little bit) the fish tend to get lost as they blend in with the black background. I have two Onyx Mis-bar Clowns in my nano with a black background, so trust me, I know this is true.
Years ago (when I did a background) I painted the back a medium <span style="color: dimgray">dark gray color</span>, and found that in contrast to the fairly drab coloring of the background, my fish's and invert's colors just seemed to pop! Orange looked more orange, blue looked more blue, lines were more defined and everything in the tank looked more colorful and healthy. In the twenty plus years I've been doing this, I think that is the best background I've seen.
Another idea I might try in the future is to lay the empty tank on it's back, smear silicone on the back glass and use a tank substrate (same or different from what I use on the bottom of the tank, haven't decided yet which would be best) to cover the tacky silicone.
Possibilities abound, but it's really something you want to get right before you set it up, as dealing with a new background on a functioning system can be problematic.
Food for thought.....
The purpose of a background is not to draw attention to itself, but to draw attention to the aquascaping and inhabitants (afterall, thats where your money goes). Bright interesting backgrounds take attention away from what's living in your tank. Black painted backgrounds are good, but if you have fish that have black in their coloring (even a little bit) the fish tend to get lost as they blend in with the black background. I have two Onyx Mis-bar Clowns in my nano with a black background, so trust me, I know this is true.
Years ago (when I did a background) I painted the back a medium <span style="color: dimgray">dark gray color</span>, and found that in contrast to the fairly drab coloring of the background, my fish's and invert's colors just seemed to pop! Orange looked more orange, blue looked more blue, lines were more defined and everything in the tank looked more colorful and healthy. In the twenty plus years I've been doing this, I think that is the best background I've seen.
Another idea I might try in the future is to lay the empty tank on it's back, smear silicone on the back glass and use a tank substrate (same or different from what I use on the bottom of the tank, haven't decided yet which would be best) to cover the tacky silicone.
Possibilities abound, but it's really something you want to get right before you set it up, as dealing with a new background on a functioning system can be problematic.
Food for thought.....
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Whatever you paint it, do it in LATEX. That way, you can always change it or peel it off if you decide to sell the tank. Yes, you have to be careful not to scrape it off, but if you're not touching the back of your tank often, it shouldn't be a problem.
A trick I learned was to mask off everything but the back glass, spray paint the outside back, then with a gloved hand, spread a thin coat of silicone all over the painted side. This keeps salt creep from eating away at the paint AND when it's time to scrape it off, it's actually very easy and comes off (with a razor blade) in long strips rather than tiny paint scrapings that' difficult to contain.
Agreed, my RBTA, along with the actual rock, is stunning on the black background of my nano, but so many aquarium fish are accented in black (clowns, PB Tangs, etc.) that fine detail in their coloration gets lost in the black background.
I learned about color contrast in an aquarium at 12yo when I was at Kmart picking out a 5g tank, 2 orange fantails, orange gravel and fake orange plant. The clerk looked at my choices and cringed, then suggested a bright blue gravel and neon green plant to contrast the color of the goldfish. Adding a black background to that tank made it the coolest goldfish tank I'd ever seen (hey.....I was 12, lol) Since then many things have changed in my aquaria choices but learning about contrast in a tank I consider to be one of the basic building blocks of knowledge</em> in setting up an aquarium.
Before you decide what color background you are going to go with, maybe you should consider what type and color of fish you'll be keeping. A blue background will make orange clowns and yellow tangs look vibrant, but do nothing to inhance the look of a Powder Blue Tang. My goldfish looked great with a black background, but what if the fish were Black or Bronze Moors? They would have been lost in the tank. No, I'm not comparing goldfish to a reef tank, I'm comparing contrasting to coordinating colors in a tank, and contrast always adds more interest. The suggestion of gray isn't a personal preference, it's a neutral color that's rarely found in home reefs with a few caveats (Naso Tangs come to mind), making it easier to create visual contrast.
Just look at the issue with an artist's eye, and remember how important contrasting colors are in a natural reef, and you'll be on the right track.
Get on rc. Find mflamb on the large tank forum. He has been using this for awhile and so has one of the past totm. And by past I mean awhile ago. Those two are really easy to talk to, and there is also a foam background and rock thread
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Foam/LR thread on RC
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I thought about foaming mine, but there was too much risk of what might happen to the foam long term AND with detritus and other gunk getting caught behind the foam wall. In the latter case, you could avoid it by using an egg crate base, being very diligent about sealing the foam, and by siliconing the egg crate to the back glass. It seems there's a lot of room for error there, IMO.
