# diy background attachment idea



## skiner766 (Aug 31, 2016)

I was thinking about doing a diy background for 75gal tank using foam and drylok, however I had an idea on how to attach it to the tank without silicone. What if I used egg crate to attach it. One sheet on back side where the bg sits against the tank and one along bottom of tank attached to the first one. that way my rocks could hold the whole thing down. Thoughts?


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## newcichlidiot (Jul 7, 2010)

Sounds precarious at best, although never having had one I guess I can't (or shouldn't) say. It seems as though you want a good seal against the back of the tank to keep out foreign matter. I am not sure if this accomplishes that. Just sayin'. Once again $0.02 worth from someone who knows nothing about what were talking about.


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## skiner766 (Aug 31, 2016)

Im not worried about stuff getting behind it, well as long as i keep the fish from getting back there anyhow, my filter intakes and such will be back there to pick up any muck. was mainly just thinking about keeping it from floating up. With the amount of rocks in our mbuna tanks they should be enough to hold down a foam bg. and being able to remove it if need be would be great.


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## JimA (Nov 7, 2009)

You will surprised at how much weight it takes to hold down a foam background. I have done mine a couple of different ways, first way I let the buoyancy of the background hold itself in place against the frame of the tank and the center psc of glass with rock at the btm holding it in places. You can see it in my tank section, I really liked that layout so I might go back to it at some point. The other way which I like as well, I used PVC pipe with rebar inside sealed up of course and I used mega size zip ties to attach to the background. On the big psc you see it took 2 36" pipes and 1 24" to hold it down, the smaller psc of background I used just one 24" psc. I was amazed at how much weight it took to hold them down. Anyway hope that helps in someway!

Here is a quick pic of it, I used sand to hide the pvc pipe, which is attached to the btm of each background psc. The fish can and do swim behind it and I can remove it if I want. I also have a power head placed behind it in the back left corner so I do not get any fish waste back there.


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## TheFishGuy1 (Oct 4, 2018)

Jima, that's beautiful!


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