How to install background?

[TMWTim]

Thanks for the compliments.

It is a fun little tank so far. We bought this little tank after getting a 50% off at a LPS. I thought 'why not?". The LED's are 'alright'. They really aren't bright enough to get some real growth out of the plants. A few days out of the week I place another set of LED light on the top just to make sure there is enough light and I also use a HM CO2 reactor every other week. The Amazon Swords up front are growing like weeds. Hard to tell with that pic but you can see the new leaves in the center (white in color). The tank is rather new, just under 2 months. I would have taken a much better pic closer up but was just showing the background. Also, i used a couple of fancy guppies to cycle the tank a little faster and sure enough one of the females decided to increase the population by 15+.

Yeah that stock box filter type is a joke and it never made it in the tank. I am using just a mini bio wheel that I seeded in my main FW tank.

Anyway, it has been fun so far. Looking forward to seeing what it looks like 6 months from now. I am betting I will be pruning leaves soon. The wife loves it in the kitchen and she loves the 'kids'.







Below is a older pic when the tank was in the bedroom before I moved it to make room for the new 14g BioCube. You can see the added lights and biowheel...

[TaknByD]

:::UPDATE:::

So the other day (Sunday) I gave the whole Vaseline thing a try... I first peeled the background off my glass, cleaned it and the glass, applies a super thin layer of Vaseline to the background, and applied it to the glass. First thing I noticed was boy did it stick. After finally getting it where I needed it I started to squeeze all of the air bubbles out with this cool thing I picked up from Lowes. I guess it's what they use for wallpaper or something but works really well... Needless to say I tried and tried and couldn't get it to look right at all... The Vaseline just didn't want to work it's way out. One thing I noticed was when looking at it straight on it looked great, but because I have a corner bow front tank and I am doing the back and sides of my tank you can really see the imperfections. It was so bad that I took it off, cleaned the glass, and went back to Petco to grab some more Sea View and another background piece to apply it on my tank... I have gone from blue to black. I really appreciate the info and the lessons learned while applying my background......

So here is what I have learned. If you are like most people and are just doing the back of a tank, go with the Vaseline. It sticks a ton better and will stay on there until the life of the tank, unless you want to just pull it off... But if your tank has the angles as mine then you might want to go with the Sea View. It's not as sticky as you'd like it to be, but you won't see the imperfections on the angles that you would see with Vaseline. Just my $0.02.

[tebstan]

Great to see an update! Sorry it turned out to be such a hassle for you, but at least it's something that can benefit others when they're doing some research. Thanks for posting your results.