Painting Aquarium Ornaments: What Is Safe?

When it comes to painting aquarium ornaments, it’s so important to know what is and what isn’t safe. Let’s face it. Our pet fish live in the fish tank beside those ornaments, so if the paint isn’t aquarium safe, it could kill our fish.

How to know what’s safe?

When it comes to painting fish tank ornaments, for your aquarium decorating, it’s important to understand the difference in paints. Some are safe, so long as they are varnished with a hard setting water proof varnish and some aren’t safe no matter what.

The best way to decide is to stick with an acrylic water-soluble paint. That means it is acrylic paint, and it dissolves with water. It isn’t an oil paint.

Seal With Varnish

Once you paint your fish tank ornament with acrylic paint, you need to seal the paint with varnish. This sets hard over the paint so it doesn’t leech into the water. The thing with the varnish, it needs to be a waterproof varnish, so it won’t dissolve off the ornament in water. I have always used a Liquitex varnish to paint my ornaments, and have never had a problem.

Let them cure for a couple of days, and all should be well. You can test your water for a few days after putting the ornament in with the fish to make sure your water parameters don’t change, especially the ph of your tank.

Creating Another World and Painting Aquarium Ornaments

Carry on the theme of another world in your fish tank by, following the colour scheme with rocks, mixture of silk plants, which come in every colour or find something that relates to the theme made of resin or use real plants.

If the colour isn’t right, it’s easy to paint any decoration in acrylic paint, topped with a couple of coats of varnish.

In my experience this is perfectly safe for fish. Let the varnish cure for at least 3 days or more. Give the item a good wash before placing it into your aquarium. For the next few days, check the PH with a stick or PH tester to make sure your decoration hasn’t changed your water parameters.
If you find your PH has changed dramatically take the ornament out.

Do a 25% water change and keep an eye on the PH until it’s returned to normal.
Liquidtex, is a popular acrylic paint, sold worldwide and is perfectly safe for fish. They also have a varnish range.

I will test more paint and varnish ranges over the coming months, report my findings to you guys here and on Social Media. My Socials are top and bottom of every page.

Enjoy Another World Background Wraps and please send in pictures of your fish tanks once you have them decked out with your another world aquarium sticker.

Above is one of our new star Wars themed images.

Remember we have new images added weekly, so to find out first what they are remember to sign up to our news letter. Hit the subscribe button below, to become a memeber.

You will not only find out first when new images are added, you will get $10 off your first background. We also send advice on creating new and exciting themes. If you loved our worlds backgrounds, you can see all of the world’s collections here.