Decorations

When setting up your aquarium, it is definitely recommended to add decorations. Your
fish will give you hours of viewing pleasure, and the more natural their environment
look, the greater your pleasure will be since they will display a much wider range of
natural behaviors. There are various kinds of suitable and aquarium safe decorations
available. Your choice is limited only by the amount of money you are willing to spend
and the fish species that you keep.

The primary focus when you decorate your aquarium, besides your fish well being, is to
keep all unsightly equipment well hidden. It is therefore nice to have some sort of scenery
at the back of the aquarium. The décor should be used to hide the equipment that you are
using within the aquarium, so that your aquarium takes on a more natural look. You do
not want wires and tubes peeking from all corners. There are several commercial
backdrops that simulate water, plants etc. They are an excellent buys if you are happy
with the look of these. This makes the fish feel more secure and makes your aquarium
look better. Many of the shy fish feel 'exposed' from all sides, if there is nothing covering
them from behind. Another inexpensive and easy solution is to use colored cardboards as
your backdrop. They are not very hard to make, and can be changed as often as you wish.
There are also more expensive backgrounds that you put inside the aquarium and that
simulate real biotopes in a more realistic way. These are stunning but can unfortunate be
rather expensive.

Painting the glass with your favorite shade is a widely used option, but this has to be done
carefully. Make sure that no paint is spilled into the inside of the aquarium since any
traces of paint in the water after the fish come in can be deadly to them. Also, if you do
not spread the paint evenly, light coming in from the back will show up the bad patches.
Changing the paint once you get tired of it is typically more cumbersome than simply
changing a poster backdrop.

Substrate refers to the material that you use at the bottom of your aquarium, like sand,
pebbles etc. This is not only a form of beautiful aquarium decoration; it will also serve
several purposes in your aquarium. There are some aquarists who advocate putting in
little or no substrate at all, while other can’t imagine an aquarium without it.