Back lighting another tank…

So the 55 gallon, that is not with the rest of my tanks, is up tight against the wall ( filters on both ends ) it has the double sided background I had 20 years ago, and with the addition of 12 pothos vines, it’s looking dark… I’m going to change out to a lighter background, similar to the ones I’m backlighting in my other tanks… the last plant light I bought, was a waterproof LED “tape light strip” very thin… I’m going to try one of those in the limited space behind the tank, to back light the new background… my other tanks use 2 sets of back lighting, one, comes on before the main lights in the morning, for 4 hours, the other comes on in the evening , and stays on until around midnight…

I really like my backlit tanks, and think I’ll do similar with this one… this is an example, my Asian tank, with the main lights off, and the background lit

Working on this tonight on this tank I have a vinyl blue water background… I got that in place, but I’ve been trying to fish some waterproof tape LED lights behind, to light up the back ground… in the example above, I have a work area behind the tank… but in this particular one, I have about a 3/8 inch gap, between the back glass, and the wallboard… tried a couple different ways, but not happy with the results… so I think I’m going to have my fabrication buddy, cut me some thin aluminum strips, like 1 inch wide, and 5 feet long ( tank is 4 feet wide ) the LED light tape has adhesive on the opposite side of the light diodes, so I can attach those to the strips, and slide the strips n from one end… the other xtra strip length l, can be trimmed, and attached to the wall to adjust the height… I have enough of the LED tapes, to do 4 strips behind the aquarium…

Next thing will be if I add the strips, with the light shining towards the tank, or towards the wall, reflecting back on the tank… on my other tanks, the back lighting doesn’t show the individual points of light from the LED diodes… this is done facing the light away from the tank… but with only 3/8 inch space, it may not reflect back the same as on the tanks with more space behind them… so that and some water changes, are my projects this weekend…

One tape partially installed

Barely found the ambition to work on this , being sick today… I’ve got a wrinkle in the background, towards the bottom, that I want to fix yet, and I need to set the brightness, and the timers of the 4 LED strips…

So his tank is in a strange place… it a wall in our whirlpool bath / shower… we have a tendency to sit here and look at it, more in the winter… rainbows, and clown loaches… and 2 larger albino bushy noses… I keep a mister bottle in the shower, with vinegar water and a squeegee, to clean up after showers… but the glass often has calcium / soap scum on the glass, if we get too busy to clean it every day