Black Background?

[aussieman57]

I've mostly painted the back of tanks black which works great as others have mentioned. I recently set up a 90 gallon and decided to try something new...

Finally my 90 came in and setup started

Bare tank & stand. Stand is 2x4 & 2 x 6 construction. Stained and polyurethane coating for water resistance. Wife and I did the tank background last night. Did not want to paint this tank back and have to wait days for paint to dry. So I went to a local sign maker and had him cut me some black...

www.monsterfishkeepers.com

It worked out great. I was hoping the streaked appearance in the pics would stay but now it is a solid black background. The reason we went this route is we did not want the smell of paint in the house as it dried. Love the look. It does take 2 people to do this easily.

 

[FJB]

One of my construction paper-backed 75g tank is going into its 10th year. No damage, warping or anything objectionable whatsoever!

 

[Deadeye]

Me being cheap just use plastic tablecloths as my background. I use dark blue, which appears black under dim lighting and light blue under bright light giving a night day effect. In future projects I would use black.
What’s nice is it’s easily removable and you don’t have to worry about air bubbles.

 

[Backfromthedead]

I've painted the backs of tanks black, blue and green. They all looked pretty good. Really depends on what you want. Also, depends where you're keeping the tank. My current 166 has the overflow painted black, but the rest of the tank isn't. This is in case I want to move the tank into an open area one day and be able to look at it from every side.

A nice blue is a great background. I used this color "evening eclipse" by baer for an old tank project and plan to go back to it for some future tanks.

 

[punman]

I have enjoyed seeing all these suggestions. I painted the back of a 33 gallon tank blue many years ago and it is still looking fine. For my other tanks I have used the traditional backgrounds pet stores sell.

If you are hesitant on using black paint, you could tape on a plastic or other type of background for a few months to see how well you like that colour. Then paint it black if you love black. But then it is a bunch of work to tear down a tank to move it if you want to paint it later. And where do you put the fish when you do that?