1000 liter 7 foot Amazon theme tank

Internal homemade artificial background

Artificial plants

Homemade 300 liter sump baffle filter with 4000L/H pump

Sump contains 2x 300W heaters, 5x bags BioZorb, 1x water softening pillow, bio-media and filter wool pre-filter.

4x Red Oscars

1x Gold Severum

3x Geophagus Surinamensis

3x Tinfoil Barbs

16x Giant Danios

I decided to make my own internal background for the tank to get the ultimate visual impact. It needed to look similar to the amazon river and there were no commercial backgrounds that fit the bill. I am not a handyman by any stretch of the imagination but after a little research I discovered that homemade backgrounds are relatively easy and cost very little. My real challenge was finding a method that would not change the PH of hardness of my soft-water aquarium.

My background is made from high density Styrofoam and painted with a colored pond sealer. Styrofoam and pond sealer are both cheap, add insulation to the tank and the Oscars can't hurt themselves by bashing into it.

These are the artificial plants that I elected to use. All decoration in this aquarium had to be tough enough to survive repeated attacks by determined Oscars!

An experimental wood pile - originally intended for the center of the tank but ended up covering the overflow box in the final product.

All my plants and wood were soaked for three months to remove any pollutants and reduce the amount of tannins in the wood.

After researching in the net I began experimenting with different types of backgrounds. Above are a couple of experimental rocks. I call the top one the “lamington”.

I decided on using high density polystyrene for the background. I ordered several sheets of varying thicknesses and 3 large blocks to carve my background out of. Then I carved out a series of large “rocks” followed by smaller and thinner ones to fill the gaps. I melted the outer crust of the “rocks” using a small butane torch to make them more solid. The foam rocks fitted together like a puzzle. I made some holes for artificial plants to “grow” out of.

Most of my background is less than 10mm thick and tightly bunched together so you can not see the back of the tank. The background does not exceed 10mm thickness where it meets the surface so I don't lose any vital surface area for oxygen exchange.

I also used a few sheets of Styrofoam at 50mm thickness to add depth to the background without using up too much space.

To add depth to the scene I used a few large blocks that I shaped and hollowed out behind so they do not displace too much water.

I painted the back of the tank with pond sealer where the gaps in the rocks would be so no glass would be visible. In hindsight it would have looked better painted black to give the gaps more depth. You can see the background rocks on the ground behind the aquarium, they have been painted with 3 coats of sandstone coloured pond sealer.

Finally I used silicone to glue in the background and then rolled the tank upright. I added a few more rocks to the bottom to add depth. I glued in all the artificial plants with silicone and then painted the bottom of the tank with black pond sealer.

Add crushed granite substrate and fish for the end result...

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Copyright (c) Alexander Foreman