White Paint for inside of hood

["Wayne Jones" <waj at mnsi_net>]

Stephanie wrote:

I just finished my tank hood and stained the outside a nice cherry
color.  I want to paint the inside of the hood white.  I am wondering
what type of paint to get.  I will have an open top and I want to make
sure that condensation on the inside of the hood won't cause dangerous
chemicals in the paint to enter the tank as water drips down.  Maybe
this is not an issue but I have not had a tank before without a cover
glass. Please advise me on a good bright white paint that won't hurt my
fish and plants.


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To my knowledge there is no economical white paint that will do the job
in that enviroment. I have tried a lot of things but nothing has worked.
If you have no glass cover do yourself a huge favour and seal the inside
with 3 coats of marine epoxy. Two part marine urethane paint over top of
the epoxy would probably last a long time but it is very expensive.
Latex paint will work and won't produce a lot of fumes but you will be
repainting quite often. It is messy and time consuming. It is much
cheaper and easier to buy some white aluminum flashing for a reflective
surface and line the hood with that. The surface appears to last
indefinately. I also use the aluminum sheet to hold my lamp sockets.
Feel free to ignore most of this advice but you should really listen to
me about the epoxy. I have had several hoods come to grief because I
didn't use epoxy. One of them was a lot of work and was very nice before
the moisture got to it. It's in the garbage now. Since then I always use
epoxy and there are no problems at all.

Wayne