Tank Decor Help

[BDawg364]

Here's a few questions....
I am still in college and live in an apartment that always have an array of people coming in and out. My fish tanks are always the highlight of the apartment, but I still feel they are lacking something. Does anyone have any themed tanks (such as a movie or amusement park, etc) or has that faded away? I mean like background, decorations, everything. Also, I think it would be cool to get a very clear picture of an unattainable fish and tape it to my background, to look like the fish is in the tank (coelcanth, asian aro, etc.). Has anyone done any of these?

 

[illustrae]

Well, unfortunately, themed tanks that look good tend to be quite expensive, or completely tacky. I kindof like the idea of getting a picture of a huge fish that you can't have in your tank and using it as a background picture, but unless you were able to get a vinyl sticker of it, the glass would fade the image and it would just look like a taky background. That's why natural looking tanks are so popular. It's pretty easy to make a planted tank look nice and impressive, and plants tend to be cheaper than huge plastic castles and such.

That said, the quality of huge plastic castles and shipwrecks has gone up considerably in the past decade or so, and if you don't mind giving up a lot of space and having fewer and smaller fish, and of course shelling out the money for something like that, they can look okay. Little plastic toys like action figures and toy soldiers or little plastic animals are also sometimes aquarium safe. I also had a friend who would go to antinque shops and buy glassware to put in her tank. It looked a bit like a maze of crystal at one point, but the algae was a bit of a problem after a while.