Background on tank or no?

[carey]

Since I've recently gotten a boatload of coralline on my back glass that i am unable to scrape I am debating a background or no. I used to have a the regular blue one, I took it off about a week ago. I actually kinda liked it that way other than the cords and whatnot but noticed I seemed to have less light in the tank.

Do backgrounds help keep the light in or have any benefit other than prettiness? I just put the back side of the blue backing up which is black and I think I like this the best but the algae shows up way more.

I guess the question after all that is do you guys have backgrounds? is there any benefit to having one? and if you do have one what colors do you all use? I was debating painting it but I wanna be really sure before i do it. I'm not scraping it off that's for sure. lol

 

[jcolon]

I have a black background and I LOVE it. It really does help the colors in the tank pop. Rocks ... substrate, fish plants etc...!

Granted ... blemishes on the glass will show up more .. but that just lets me know where I need to do some scraping

In your case ... sounds like you have some colorful fish ... so I can only imagine how good they'd look

 

[vitacrux]

No background here, but that is mostly because my tank is on my bar between my living room and my kitchen, so if I had a background I wouldn't be able to watch the fish while I cook!

 

[carey]

LOL

 

[nxb161]

I don't have any backgrounds on my tanks either. When I had a lot of freshwater tanks I used to use aluminum foil as a background.

 

[Deep Seven]

I've heard some fish feel more comfortable with at least one wall not see-through. I believe Sweden has a law requiring aquariums to have at least one wall not see-through.

 

[hackteck]

i have a black background

 

[carey]

I just changed the 29g to a black background too and it looks so much better. I'm not sure it looks good enough to paint yet. lol it seems like alot of people use backgorunds.
I anticipate this being a bigger issue when I upgrade to the 125g, I can't seem to decide.

 

[bavass]

I think backgrounds help light. I recently painted my background colbolt Blue and I love it! with out a background light goes through the glass if you have a back ground I think light is then reflected back into the tank. My corals like it too. You can see i still have some touching up to do but you see what the colbolt blue looks like

 

[melosu58]

No background here. I dont have anyway to clean my glass in the back since the LR rest on it.

 

[hackteck]

bavass in that picture what are thing those tree stick things in your background?

 

[carey]

No background here. I dont have anyway to clean my glass in the back since the LR rest on it.

That's my dilemma. I have several rocks now against the back glass so i can't get in there to clean or scrape. I can't see the build up without a background but with the black or blue it's pretty evident. lol

Does anyone else notice any loss of light not using a background? I want my corals to have as much of it as possible

 

[bavass]

Mangroves

 

[jcolon]

That's my dilemma.

Does anyone else notice any loss of light not using a background? I want my corals to have as much of it as possible

The light in a tank reflects off the objects in the tank, then passes through the glass out into the room which is why you can see what's inside the tank.

I don't have a coral reef tank so I do not know how important ambient light is, or do your corals depend solely on the tank lights. If so then a background should make no difference as the corals are still getting the direct light from the fixtures.

Aquariums with backgrounds appear darker because the back glass light is blocked, but the internal light is the same, plus some of that light is actually reflected back into the tank, without a background, light from inside the tank just escapes out.

 

[nxb161]

I believe Sweden has a law requiring aquariums to have at least one wall not see-through.

Say what?

 

[hackteck]

a law to make you have a background on your home aquarium? lol

 

[Purevil21]

Im debating painting the back of my tank, not sure if I want to do anything that permanent.

 

[carey]

Im debating painting the back of my tank, not sure if I want to do anything that permanent.

I'm in the same boat. lol It was a no brainer to paint my 125g cichlid tank black but it seems to be a harder choice for my sw...

 

[Purevil21]

Im thinking about a black adhesive background on the new setup.

 

[carey]

I used the adhesive backgrounds but found it difficult to apply, it was like doing car tint which I'm not very good at.