Your fish tank decorations can only do so much to beautify your aquarium. You may face a number of issues when trying to create a complete scene for a theme you have in mind. One of the biggest issues is of course space constraints. There is only so much room inside an aquarium to put stuff, no matter how big your tank may be.
Packing your aquarium with too much ornaments can also be detrimental to the health of your fish. Your fish need swim space more than nice looking decor. In fact, they would definitely not even know what that lump of resin in there is meant to represent. The only benefits they get out of tank decor is the caves to hide into and how the accessories create boundaries of sorts for the more territorial fish.
One excellent way to complete a theme is to use fish tank backgrounds. The image depicted in the background will be able to fill in the gaps for things that you do not have space to include. Let me explain what I mean by this.
Let’s just say you want to create a realistic looking Dinosaur Theme. You can place a dinosaur or two in your aquarium, along with some rocks and aquatic plants. It would look nice but plain. However, by adding a background of a dense forest or one with a volcano in the distance, the fish tank now comes alive as a real life scene from the Jurassic Period.
Aquarium backgrounds come in two varieties: flat images or 3D backgrounds.
Flat Image Backgrounds
The flat prints used as backgrounds are the traditional type of fish tank backgrounds. These are what I used in my designs many years ago. The majority of flat print backgrounds depict an underwater scene. You would see images such as coral reefs, fishes, sunken ships and stuff like these. They would make excellent backgrounds to use if your theme is Mermaids, Sunken Ships or just corals.
These days however, you can also get aquarium background prints for a number of other themes such as volcano, desert, outer space or forest scenes. Three of the best fish tank backgrounds I have seen come from the Hydro H2Show collection for the Magic World, Lost World and Atlantis themes.
If however your theme is a unique one then it may be a little more difficult to find suitable tank backgrounds to use. One option you have is to print them out yourself. By using a proper photo editor, you can print the background in separate sheets of paper and carefully glue them together ensuring that the seams don’t show. You can then get them laminated so they stay water proof. While this may be a little more tedious, you would be able to perfectly customize your background to your theme.
3D Aquarium Backgrounds
3D backgrounds for fish tanks are the latest craze when decorating an aquarium. They are really cool and make the theme you are working on look extra life like. The majority of the 3D backgrounds sold are rock backgrounds. These would make great additions to a dinosaur or archeological theme. Some of these rock backgrounds also have motifs of tree roots and trunks and would go very well if you have forest type theme such as animals or even fairies.
If you look for video guides on YouTube you will be able to find some that actually teach you how to easily make 3D aquarium backgrounds of you own.
But a word of caution if you are planning to use these. 3D backgrounds are fixed inside the aquarium and have protruding parts. They will take up a couple of inches of tank space so you would be wise to do some measuring before you buy one.
