DIY Aquarium Decor

[Luxauterna]

Hey everyone. I have been searching on different forums for the best way to create a fish safe decoration. The basic idea is to create my own piece of an old sunken ship decoration with chains. The idea is to make it look old, and have growth on it. I don't want to purchase a sunken ship decoration because they are cheesey and don't make sense proportionally. Any ideas on fish safe paint? resin for sealing? Should I try and carve it out of styrofoam? or try and find pieces of plastic from toys and coat them? I plan on making it a large showpiece decoration for a 125 gal marine fowlr tank.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Ayeeepowlow]

i say styrofoam and make it one solid piece and coat it with concrete and get some concret paint for it. just like making a diy bg instead make a ship

 

[Luxauterna]

Where can I get a big block of styrofoam, and what type? I've heard negative things about concrete in marine applications though.

 

[TMartinez]

any art store should have styrofoam... and from what i've heard over time concrete can leak chemicals into the water. There are a bunch of folks on the freshwater side that make thier own 3D backgrounds. Have a looks and see what they are using

 

[gavigan1]

There are some very good youtube tutorial for making your own porous decorative live rock search DIY live rock. The 321 method seems to be the most successful. Use portland white concrete, oyster shell (chicken feed), rock salt, and aragonite sand. You could make a really cool natural looking wreck. Be sure to post pics if you do it.