Painted background

[sweetrav18]

I am thinking about painting the back ground on the outside of my 55g tank. I have seen this done and it looks a ton better than any background i've seen. I just wanted to know if there are specific types of paint I needed to use or if the common rustoleum or oil/latex based paint form home deopt would due? does anyone have any brands of paint they have personally used. I was thinking o going with a shiny metallic silver almost like a mirror? Any suggestions opinions are appreciated as always

[nitratehater]

I just used a small can of paint from Home Depot. I don't think it was oil based 'cause it cleaned up with water. doesn't matter. I used navy blue and it looks awesome. any kind of paint will work. I just rolled it on wth one of those 99 cent foam throw away rollers.

the best part is, well obviously, it looks better than any kind you can buy on a roll, but if you don't like it, you can just scrape it off with a razor blade in 5 minutes.

mike

[vtec si]

I use a can of blue krylon spray paint once and it work well and dried fast. I did have to give two coats.

Martin

[sweetrav18]

Has anyone ever ued white as a background? Also I heard that the metallic paint will stress out my agressive fish due to reflections and also increase risk of unwanted algae growth? Any truth to either of these?

[Reefland]

Algae growth isn't going to be from a colored background; it's from nutrients. I lso don't think it would stress the fish out any but I'm not certain.

[zhenya]

Has anyone ever ued white as a background? Also I heard that the metallic paint will stress out my agressive fish due to reflections and also increase risk of unwanted algae growth? Any truth to either of these?

To me, personally, the black background is perfect for taking pictures becouse everything is stands out and appears as if it is floating in air.
Seriously though, the color is of no importance, however, for your own eyes I think subdued colors like blue or black are best.

[Samper]

I second the black background. I have a blue one and can't stand it, colors don't pop out like they should.

[dougc]

Black does work for photos. I am pretty anal about keeping the back glass clean, but it can be a pain on a deep tank. The only problem I have is that there is no way to keep the coralline off the overflows (AGA MegaFlow), so it kind of ruins the effect. Maybe when the corals grow out, the overflows won't be so noticable.