DIY Aquarium Backgrounds. Are they made professionally enough to make your tank and room look stunning?

In this article we’ll look at what DIY Aquarium Backgrounds are. When someone should use a DIY Aquarium Background. Why they should use a DIY Aquarium Background as opposed to a static vinyl background, from fishtanks.store. And how they can make a DIY aquarium Background. Lastly we’ll talk about who DIY aquarium backgrounds are best for, and Who they will be of no use too.

What is a DIY Aquarium Background?

A DIY Aquarium Background is one that is made by someone themselves or a friend or family member. You might find one on Etsy.com or a similar website. Aquarium Backgrounds DIY style have not been made by a professional printer or an aquarium product supplier.

What Are DIY Aquarium Backgrounds Made of?

There are two kinds of DIY fish tank backgrounds.

There is also the option to make a DIY Aquarium Background, by using normal window vinyl that you buy from a Target or Amazon, and using it to stick to the back glass of your aquarium.

When Should Someone Use A DIY Aquarium Background

Someone should use a DIY Aquarium Background when they are not wanting to use an image and simply prefer to use flat black, white, blue or whatever plain colour you can buy at your local department store or on Amazon.com for example.

Printed Window Vinyl’s as DIY Fish Tank Backgrounds

Some people may try to use the printed window vinyls on their tank, but will quickly find that the sticky side is the side you have to attach to the outside back glass of the tank. That means the picture faces to the wall, which you can’t see through the front of your tank.

This means you should only use a DIY fish tank background when you want a faint colour from the backside showing through to the front. If your wanting to make your own background that goes inside the tank. This can work however make sure to only use tank safe materials. We talk about this more in our complete guide to fish tank backgrounds.

How to use a DIY Aquarium Background

How to use a DIY Aquarium Background is quite simple. If you go for a printed piece of paper type background, you just need to stick the paper to the back glass, on the outside of the tank with some sticky tape. We have tried this method ourselves and don’t recommend it due to the background poster, continually falling down due to the sticky tape failing.

DIY Fish Tank Backgrounds Made With Plants and Wood

We haven’t gone the DIY fish tank background made from wood, rocks and plants ourself. You can find a post here to shed more light on it for you. I would think that this type of background would be difficult to keep clean and also would have problems with things falling off it. We all know how things fall over, fall down and float to the top in our fish tanks. If your happy for the stress of it all, by all means go ahead and try this method.

For this reason, the material chosen to use will probably be a very thin, vinyl that will fit through their home printer. Providing the tank size is smaller than an a4 sheet of paper, this could work out, however this is usually unlikely due to the huge amount of standard sized aquariums.

Why You Should Use A DIY Aquarium Background

So we just went over the when to use the DIY route and it’s same as why, and that is you don’t want an image on your background, your happy with a plain colour like black or blue. Or because you want to make your own organic style DIY aquarium background.

Who are Aquarium Backgrounds DIY style right for?

A DIY Aquarium Background will be right for people wanting to make an organic background with wood, rocks and plants. This is specialised, will take extra maintenance and lot’s of fix-ups along the way. We have linked to some tutorials here these guys show you how to make a fabric background. Ace forums also make a diy fish tank background with instructions. We haven’t tried this route ourself, due to the maintenance. We believe fishkeeping itself comes with enough maintenance without adding to the workload.

People wanting plain coloured vinyl stick on backgrounds, can go the DIY route, however, paper backgrounds are not successful as they fall down very quickly.

If your going to go the route of trying a diy static vinyl background. This could work if your printer prints large enough for your back glass of your fish tank. If it doesn’t print the image in one piece then you have problems of resizing the image with software so you know how to break down the entire image into more than one piece that will fit together to fit your tank. Most printers print with boarders so you also need to take that into account when trying to size the print out correctly.

If you can do that, does your printer take the thickness of static vinyl going through it. I found 3 printers that said they could do the job, couldn’t so I passed it onto our print partners.

When you print an image for your DIY aquarium background, it’s best to print the image in reverse, mirror wise, so it prints out the right way.

Finally when printed onto transparent static vinyl, the image doesn’t come out vibrantly. So to fix that problem our print partners, use a special trick. They laminate white vinyl onto the back of the image. This makes it come out beautifully. So if you want to make your own static vinyl background you will need a laminator.

Cutting precisely for DIY Aquarium Backgrounds

Cutting precisely won’t work with normal scissors. A guillotine is the only way to get a nice smooth cut so you will also need one of these going the diy route.

As a final point, I forgot to mention, the image will need to be resized for the tank size you are making it for. You want the entire image seen not just one that is dragged from the original, but in the right ratios. And depending on the image, it will most likely need to be upscaled so the image has enough pixels to look fantastic as a background. Upscaling software for images, come in subscriptions from most sites like photoshop.com, however quite costly.

Who Has Time or Equipment For A DIY Static Vinyl Fish Tank Background

As you can see there are many steps in creating a static vinyl aquarium background DIY. Unless you already own the equipment and the software, it works out far less expensive, buying one through professionals like ourselves. The only DIY in our process is you choosing one of our images, or any image you like, at no extra cost to yourself. So why wouldn’t you skip the DIY Aquarium Background and choose a stunning fish tank background delivered to your door. Currently, for a short time only, with $10 off, free shipping and taxes included. What are you waiting. Subscribe below and order your Aquarium Background Sticker Today.

All the best from Sharon Thoms