# Background on Acrylic Tank?



## crod1423 (Jan 27, 2014)

What is the best way to get a black background on an acrylic tank? It's my first acrylic and I'm sort of stressing. It's the last thing that needs to be done before filling it up. Would plasti-dip work on an acrylic tank? Also, anyone with actual success putting a cutout background on please let me know.

Thanks in advance.


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## atreis (Jan 15, 2013)

All manufacturers I know of allow you to order them made with black acrylic for any panels that you want. (My big tank has black acrylic for the back and left side.)

If you already have the tank, you can get backgrounds that just hang behind... Not as nice, but a lot easier than painting acrylic (although that too is possible - I've not tried it though). There are two sorts of backgrounds I've used - one sticks on and one just hangs. The former didn't work for me - I couldn't get the air bubbles out and they were very visible. The sort that just hangs works okay though.


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## hose91 (Mar 5, 2014)

I think painting it is still the way to go. Once your tank is in place, you can't easily move it or get behind it to fix/adjust any sort of hanging or stick on background. I have a stick on background on my timeout 29G in the garage (shipwreck picture from big box store) and it's full of airbubbles that would drive me crazy if it was my show tank (and it would be impossible to get behind my current tank to smooth them out). I smooth these out in my garage on a weekly basis, but they come back, and are definitely noticeable. I, too, was stressing over painting my first acrylic tank, mostly because of it's permanence, unlike a glass tank. I love the black background, it's very solid and looks great. I used a high gloss, enamel, water based paint and foam brushes/rollers. Took me 4 coats, usually somewhere between 2-8 hours between coats, depending on what I was doing. Each coat took about 5-10 minutes on a 4' x 2' tank in my garage.

I don't have any experience with plasti-dip, but think that it would work. I might look closely at the label and maybe test it on a separate piece of acrylic to make sure it wont melt the plastic. It gets used on all sorts of stuff, I think, so it's probably ok, but to be sure I'd do a google search and/or my own test. I've definitely heard positive things, and my teenage son has used it on various car projects with success.


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## dsiple3 (Mar 4, 2014)

On my old 55G acrylic, I used black poster board from the arts and crafts section of wally world. Through the water, I couldn't really tell any difference from painted tanks. I just used invisible tape and had no issues even with the slight bowing the tank does when full.


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## Mcdaphnia (Dec 16, 2003)

At the fish show I use the black heavy duty trash bags from Home Depot for contractors. One layer is all you need. I tape it on at the corners and maybe the middle of the long sides on a large tank. There may be a few waves or wrinkles showing when you look at it from the back, but they never show one bit while looking through the tank. Paint on tanks chips, peels, gets scratched, shows any dirt or imperfections. You can make it look a little better sometimes but never as clean dead black as the garbage bag.


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