A pretty cool idea

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ConanTheLibraia

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Apr 25, 2003
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D.C.
This is not a very big project, but its really cool. I discovered (well i bet a lot of others have done it before me) that it works really cool to make your own backround for a tank. I took butcher paper and cut it to the size of my small aquarium, then used magazine clippings from tropical fish hobbyist to make a collage. It looks pretty cool. I also had just the normal butcher paper as a backround on another tank, which looks very good to itself. It is just a solid white backround and the shadows of the ripples look really sweet. Plus it only took about 5 minutes.
 
I'll get some pics, i dont have a digital camera or scanner so mabie ill just buy a disposable one and at the store i think they have a place where you can scan your pictures and take them home on a disk, otherwise ill just go to a friends. Ill get some stuff up as soon as possible though.
 
is butcher paper like wax paper? or is it the same thing? or different? :bulb:
 
Backgrounds...

You Know that colored foil background that some fish stores sell. Flower shops use the same sort of thing to wrap their flower pots and will sell it to you a bit cheaper most of the time. You could also take a picture of your favorite fish and blow it up and use that as a background. My favorite type of background is something that looks like cliffs...
 
I took a piece of oak tag, and put a piece of colored tissue paper over it. Light light blueish. then I cut out shapes, fish, etc from darker colored tissue paper and glued that on. Let it dry and hung it on the back of the tank. It looks really neat.
 
I was thinking of painting the back of my tank with acrylic paints, the colorful ones that you can get at an art store. Maybe starting at the bottom with a deep navy blue and working upward to a light blue/green.
 
don't forget about good 'ol aluminum foil ... go to a dollar store, ~$1 gets you enough to do several tanks, or one huge tank ... get the 'heavy duty' kind that is like 18" wide ...

I crumple it into a ball, then unfold and tape up ... more crumplings = more wrinkles ... makes a neat effect, as ripples from the surface try to shine out the back of the tank (from lighting angle) they get reflected back into / through the tank

you can try it without wrinkles, but I think it looks kinda like a half-assed mirror that way, not artsy enough :)
 
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