Background made from real stone tiles?

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philipraposo1982

philipraposo1982

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Feb 21, 2016
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Anyone every attempt to create a background using some natural stone tiles from let's say home Depot or similar?

If I wanted to try this what adhesive would be safe and strong to glue pieces of stone together?
 
Not sure what adhesive would be safe, I'd have to defer that to others. However I have seen a few with tile backgrounds over the years, so it can be done.
 
I've put ceramic tiles (from similar to Home Depot) on both the bottom and background of this 375. The tiles I chose for the background weren't tall enough for the tank (30"), so we cut additional pieces and silcononed those onto each bigger piece. The individual bigger pieces are not siliconed on the sides to each other, and are leaning at a very slight angle at the bottom -- but the top pieces are pretty flush (as the silcone can bend a bit), and are further partially secured with rubber suction cups (normally used to hold air lines) on the top edge as an extra precaution. They haven't fallen over or anything and have remained in place nicely.

I decided to put the tiles in after the tank already had water and fish; if your tank was empty you could easily put in the tiles more flush and without an angle and by using aquarium silicone all around the edges of each pieces. The negative of putting the tiles at an angle are that waste could get stuck behind them if you don't specifically try to suck it out during water changes, and also smaller fish could go back there. Neither of these are problems in my lightly stocked tank (for some time now only 1 flagtail and 1 datnoid, the pbass and balas were taken back to LFS).

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I am thinking of using a natural brown slate and braking it up. Thin pieces all different sizes and shapes. I would silicone the pieces of rock to a solid pieces of thin acrylic sheet. I want to have a bit of depth so i could layer some rocks and stuff. Once fully dried, I was thinking of using big boulder type rocks to push up against the background pieces to help them from falling over.

Since I am using very thin slate pieces there will not be much weight at all. So some nice boulders to compliment the background should easily support it.

Thoughts?
 
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Btw, in hindsight I think they look ok but I'm not super hip on the background tile I chose (my first choice was out of stock), they look a bit too busy with the white lines and all.
 
i used slate tile from home depot and glued them useing silicone. real strong hold . only issue once they are on i havnt been able to get them off, broke a 25g bow front trying to remove them.

did my 150g and 75 g tanks in tile. i really like the way it looks especially once algae starts growing on the un even surface. the earth colors against the algae looks nice to me.

20190121_193236.jpg
 
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pescado209 said:
i used slate tile from home depot and glued them useing silicone. real strong hold . only issue once they are on i havnt been able to get them off, broke a 25g bow front trying to remove them.

did my 150g and 75 g tanks in tile. i really like the way it looks especially once algae starts growing on the un even surface. the earth colors against the algae looks nice to me.

View attachment 1368827
Click to expand...


I thought about doing what you did but I knew I wouldn't like the look of the lines and how the tiles look don't flow together very nicely.

I bought a tile and a small piece of plexiglass. Broke up the tile into smaller thinker pieces and used silicone to attach it to the plexiglass. I am going to let it fully cure for 48 hours before I try putting it into the tank

20190413_162114.jpg
 
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philipraposo1982 said:
I thought about doing what you did but I knew I wouldn't like the look of the lines and how the tiles look don't flow together very nicely.

I bought a tile and a small piece of plexiglass. Broke up the tile into smaller thinker pieces and used silicone to attach it to the plexiglass. I am going to let it fully cure for 48 hours before I try putting it into the tank
Click to expand...

Well for sure your approach looks more natural, though in a larger tank it would be considerably more work -- worth it though if you have the time.
 
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