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The background looks awesome, when and if I ever get a bigger tank I may give it a go

It’s been a while since I last took any decent complete tank shots, so for now the following one will have to do. Maybe I’ll remember to take a photo during this weekend and post that too. As you can see in the photo,, the background is mostly covered… That is completely depending on how long it was since I last did some weeding work on the tank. Right now there is a lof of background visible, but four days ago I couldn’t see it anywhere at all. In either case I like the look of the tank and that would not be the case if the background wasn’t there. I hate staring at the reflection of glass on the backside of an aquarium
[img] http://kotiweb.kotiportti.fi/sini.bonke/aquarium/photos/tank_25-3-05.jpg[/img]

As for the brand of paint I used, it was a Danish company I believe. I can’t right now recall the name of it, but I’ll check that out. It doesn’t really matter though, what you have to make sure of is that it is marine grade epoxy paint on a water basis (NOT petrol based!!). The water base is important for several reasons, first of all, it doesn’t melt your Styrofoam, while petrol based epoxy will. Secondly, and probably more important for general aquarium use (if you want to paint other things then Styrofoam), the individual compounds can be washed off with water. So any leftover compounds that did not polymerize can be easily removed and won’t end up in your tank-water, killing your fish. This kind of epoxy paint was for me rather hard to find, I had to go to three different shops in order to find it. In the end I found some, but it only came in one color, which I then darkened with some powdered carbon. I’d say your best bet of finding it would be in boat maintenance shops and such, but just make a few calls before you start driving around

As for the backside, I made no changes to that and did not heat it. I wanted that as flat as possible since I needed to glue it into the tank with some silicone kit. As the sheets of Styrofoam come as near perfectly flat slabs, I made no changes (did not paint them either).
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First of all.. top background

Just a few questions, what brand of paint did you use and what type of chemicals should l be looking out for in the paint?

Also did you heat the back section of the background (the part no one sees)?

Cheers

Your background looks great!! I may try to make one also for my 120 gal. tank. I'd love to see yours with the fish in it.

Don, the styrofoam is indeed a bit of a pain, however, with a very shap and thin knife it isn't too bad. I am currently making a new background for a second tank that I bought yesterday, and since it is around freezing at the moment outside, I don't want to spend all day on the balcony Instead I'm now using the smallest room we have and keep a vacuum cleaner at hand, so far not a single pellet of foam has escaped the room

Wow what a great idea for a background! Very nice set of instructions too. I may have to try this for my tank. May have to wait for spring or summer tho. If my wife caught me getting styro-foam all over the place she would kill me.

Don

Dr Bonk

Yes it will be for the Anubias tank. It will not be for a few years yet though. All of those plants are on either wood or rocks, the larger varieties are just floating free at the back of the tank. Which will make it a lot easer to do.
Recently I had to move one of the larger varieties as it was growing under a log and the leaves were turning yellow, that one was over 12ins in length.

Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
VOTE NOW VOTE NOW

Yes, that sounds like a good plan, I had the advantage of not yet having any fish at all and thus could take my time. One little piece of advice though, When I made this background I thought I'd make it look natuar and recline a little bit (thicker at the bottom, thinner towards the top), that was a mistake. The lower 15 - 20 cm (8" disappear into the substrate, but as that part is sticking out more than the rest of the background, it is somewhat difficult to put any plants into the substrate clost to the background. So if you intend to make it a planted tank, keep that in mind. Will it be for that anubias tank of yours, it'll be such a shame to take that apart, it's a great looking tank!

It was Bonke when I posted the Q now it is Dr Bonk. I think you have been busy enough, I had figured it out by a close look at the photos.
When I decide to do it I will have get hold of a spare tank as I think leaving all my fish not in some thing suitable could be rather costly.

Thank you for the reply.

Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
VOTE NOW VOTE NOW

Keith, I only now saw your post in this thread... several months late I guess but here is an answer anyway. My tank also has a middle support that made it impossible to insert the background as one piece, so instead the background was cut into three pieces. I glued some loose pieces onto the different sections that would overlap with the other parts in order to hide the cut, pretty much as you already figured out yourself.

After painting the background the pieces were left to dry for 2 days and subsequently first washed under the shower to get rid of most of the leftover chemicals (that's why it is important to have a water based paint, the chemicals that do not polymerize can be washed off with water). I then glued the pieces into the tank with silicone kit, left that to dry for 24 hours and then filled the tank with water. During the next few days I did a 100% water change every day in order to get the chemicals out that would still bleed out of the back ground. I believe that after about 4 days I continued with setting up the tank with soil and plants while keeping up water changes every other day (30% or so), two weeks after the plants the first fish went into the tank (rummy nose tetras). I lost one of those on the first night, probably due to stress, the other still swim happily around in my tank.

All in all, from scratch to fully stocked tank was about 4 weeks I think

Bonke

I have thought of doing a similar back ground for many years. Possibly one of the best set of DIY instructions I have seen for a long time. I will cut and paste all the info and keep a copy of the photos.

My problem is that my 5ft tank has a center support and would be difficult to make and install it in one piece. No big problem realy as all I would have to do would be make the shapes over lap then spot glue them when in place.

How soon after installing it to the tank did you reset your tank up.

Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
VOTE NOW VOTE NOW

Just an activating post so this thread doesn't get lost again.... I'd hate to write it all down again

Hey people,

Here follows the method I used to create a background for inside the tank, made out of Styrofoam. It is really a fairly simple process and the result is very satisfying (for me at least).

What do you need?
1) Styrofoam sheet (5 cm/2" thick)
2) A sharp knife (try to have it as sharp as possible and a thin blade)
3) A paint stripper heat-gun (I used the 300 degree Celsius setting on mine)
4) Silicone kit (Aquarium grade, watch out of anti-fungal ingredients that kills your fish)
5) 2-component epoxy paint, marine grade
6) Brushes for painting
7) Pencil and paper

How to do it?
First start by making a design of your background, it's easier to start cutting the foam if you have some sort of a goal to work to, and it decreases the risk of ruining your foam sheet. Once you have your idea on paper you can start cutting. Depending on the size of your tank, you start out by dividing the sheet of foam into two or more pieces. Larger tanks usually have bars on top to support the tank and if you keep the foam in one piece it may be difficult, if not impossible, to get it into the tank.

Now the messy par starts, generating depth, so it's probably best if you do this in a place you can easily clean. With the knife you can now start cutting large chunks of foam away, making a rough outline of what your background will look like in the end. There are a couple of things you should keep in mind when doing this, don't make very deep cuts, it's faster to make deep cuts, but the problem is that if you cut deeper than you actually intended, that you will see those cuts later when you start heating them. The heat will have a larger surface at these cuts and will eat away the foam faster at these places (I found out the hard way). Another thing to keep in mind is that you don't want to keep very sharp angles, they tend to look unnatural and although you can smooth them out quite a bit with the heat gun, they won't disappear entirely. If you think that you need more depth in your background then you can also glue some extra pieces on top of the sheet with silicone kit. This works very nice for the places where you have divided the background. Here is the first stage of my background:



Once the kit has dried out you can now start with smoothing out the background, using the heat gun. Do this at a well ventilated area, preferably outside, since melting Styrofoam releases some very toxic gases. With my heat gun it worked very nicely when I held it about 1-2 cm (0.5 - 1 inch) away from the foam. Just try it first on an unused piece of foam so you get the hang of it. In my case the background ended up like this:



Then it is time for the worst part of the job: painting. I used marine grade epoxy paint. The important part here is that it should be water based, meaning that you can wash away the un-polymerized components with water after painting it. Finding water based epoxy paint can be tricky, I had to go to four stores to find it, and then they only had one color: light grey, which would not do. Another good thing about water based epoxy is that it doesn't melt your Styrofoam. In my case I had to settle for the grey paint, but then I changed the color by adding carbon powder (100% carbon) to the paint and mixing that in. The painting process takes from very long to forever, depending on the size of your background. Mine was 120 cm x 55 cm. The biggest problem is complete coverage. It will often look like you've painted everything, but then it turns out that you painted air, meaning that there is an air bubble under your paint that will burst when it's drying, leaving a horrible white speck. When you're done painting, leave the background to dry for about 48 hours or so, after that you can rinse it under the shower to wash away most of the un-polymerized chemicals (shouldn't be much, if any) and glue it into the tank with silicone kit. I guess you can try leaving it loose in the tank, and keep it in place with the substrate and maybe some rocks, but I did not want to take that risk and glued it in.



As you can see in the photo I kept it in place with some pieces of wood and old socks You can also see how the "carbonated" paint turned out.



At this stage you're almost done, leave the kit to dry for 24 hours and then fill the tank, leaving it filled for 48 hours, do a complete water change, and then again leave it for 48 hours. It was interesting to see how the color looked completely different when the background was submerged.




I finished this background about 3 weeks ago and the fish in my tank are doing great, I have the diary in another thread in this section:
http://www.fishprofiles.com/interactive/forums/thread.asp?id=36299

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask them. Good luck
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[span class="edited"][Edited by Bonke 2004-06-24 17:10][/span]

[span class="edited"][Edited by Bonke 2004-06-27 10:07][/span]

cool.... we can even kinda see you on your 4th pic]

I thought I'd revive this thread a little now that you can actually see the pictures without having to go through a link

Hey Matt,

You can give the iron a try, but I don't think it will get quite hot enough, and be sure to ask your wife (if you're married) because I'm afraid the foam may get stuck to your iron if you're unlucky

Thanks for the reply Bonke, I have a soldering iron, so that may have to do. How about a regular clothes iron for the large sections, would that work?

---

Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

within seconds everything was coated in the tiniest pieces of stryfoam, which all are static, so they stick to everything

I had that problem when I was cutting sheets of it to use as an outside the tank background.

great write up, I'm considering doing something similar to support and screen an HOB filter on a stock tank.

^_^

Hey mattyboombatty,

I got my styrofoam from a Do it yourself store where they sell pretty much any kind of tools and materials that you would need if you go about building your own house, bathroom, garden shed, etc. They had sheets of several sizes in thickness, being 120 cm (4') long and 100 cm (2'10" wide. I bought one such sheet of 2" thick and it cost me 3.95, so about $ 4.50, which gave me plenty of material to work with.

As for sanding it down, like Fallout mentioned, it is an absolute mess. I tried a tiny little part with a dremel (a sort of mini drill) and within seconds everything was coated in the tiniest pieces of stryfoam, which all are static, so they stick to everything! Believe me, you don't want that! Besides that, the heating also has a second advantage: when the styrofoam melts away, the part that is left behind gets a little bit harder, it is basically a bit reinforced, which makes it more difficult for the fish to nip it off (though the polymerized paint does the same thing). I guess you could try it with just cutting, but you will get a whole lot better result with heating. If you don't have a heat gun you can also use a blowtorch, but then put it at a very low setting and definatly first try it on an unused piece of foam. If you don't have one of those... hmmm, a candle maybe or a soldering tool, though it will be a bit tricky.

Good luck

[span class="edited"][Edited by 2004-05-16 02:58][/span]

The styrofoam would just break apart in tiny little flecks if you sanded, methinks. He had that problem when he made it. Check his Aquarium Diary thread for more information