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Re: Background "material"



I have sort of lost track of the posts to quote from, but my opinion on
aquarium backgrounds is as follows:

I hate tanks without backgrounds. They make a huge difference. The last
thing I want to see is the dirty wall with cobwebs behind my tank and a
bunch of wires hanging down. I don't even particularly like tanks that are
viewed on both sides.

A dark background really makes the plants stand out more and adds a sense of
depth. Even if you have a jungle tank, I dont want to see any rays of
backlight shinning thru the plants. In many instances we purposely have much
of the rear exposed. Many Amano type aquascapes certainly do. A real fine
leaf plant such as Rotala, Mayaca, or Didplis can be seen much more plainly
against a dark black or blue background.

The majority of the time I use a jet black background. I dislike painting a
tank, it is too messy and to permanant. I use a black felt or heavy black
material from a fabric store. You should see the looks I get from all the
women in the store! On one tank I bought a blue paper made for that purpose
from an aquarium store, and really liked how it looked. Amano has used blue
backgrounds, you can see it very plainly in some of his pictures.

I believe the fish and their colors also stand out much more against a dark
background. The backgrounds of pictures of plants...? In a thickly planted
tank I think they could work as well. I used them several years ago. If its
heavily planted, what you see of the photographed plants blends in very
nicely, and unless you look VERY closely, you cant really tell. There is a
picture of someones river tank on my WEB site that used a picture of a river
as the background. The aquascape itself is laid out in such a way that it
lines up perfectly more or less with the picture of the river, so it looks
like the riverbed curves off far into the distance. Pretty neat. He even
took the photo himself. I have never seen any measurable difference in light
level, or seen fish stressed by dark backgrounds.

Purple foil backgrounds... I dont know about that one, may go good with the
glow in the dark fish and neon gravel! :)

Robert Paul Hudson
http://www.aquabotanic.com