HABITAT

[Maroonostrich]

I believe personally that people realise that making such a massive feature of the decor in the tanks with bright colours and little novelty items detracts from the exquisite natural colouration and shape of the fishes themselves.

For me, when my tank is complete, the decor is just going to be a nice backdrop to the fish themselves and easily 'ignored'- the fish are the artwork, not what I did to their home!

Crucial factor is of course, that the fish are happy.. as a misguided kid I put a sunken ship wreck in my goldfish tank- it was loved by my little weather loach or whatever he was, so no one minded!!

 

[Synirr]

Haha, the satanic fish tank
The pentacle is actually pretty cool looking. I wouldn't mind that if it weren't inverted and obviously satanic (too cliche for me, thanks)

 

[Angry_Platy]

At my favourite LFS I saw a "volcano" in the tank. Basically what it was was a peaked mountain type structure with an airstone attached causing bubbles to come out the top. There was also a red light which seemed to come from underneath making the mountain glow and the thing look like, well, a volcano. I asked them if I could buy it and they said it wasn't for sale. As soon as I see one though I will be buying it

Is that tacky?

Basically my tanks are as natural as a glass enclosed environment can be. The 30gal is planted with a sand substrate and some driftwood. The 6 and 10gal are relatively plain with natural gravel and some plastic plants. The 75gal is setup for Mbuna cichlids with lots of rocks/caves also with some driftwood to keep the catfish happy OH....and there is a ceramic car in there too....jut like I am sure there is is Lake Malawi

 

[dwarfgourami]

Isn't funny how we always seem to do parallel threads- we've just been here!

I'll just repeat what I said below, that as long as the fish have their needs seen to, I have no problem with people's tacky tanks. I do confess to a slate ornamental bridge (just plain blocks of slate) which fills a very useful function as a territorial divider and sheltering place in my tank; and my guppies love swimming under it.

As for the burnt-out car, it doesn't seem a totally unrealistc water feature in many parts of the world. I seem to remember the Portsmout Aquarium had something like it in one of their big tanks before they redid them, I suppose their point was that this is what you might expect to find if you go diving outside Portsmouth...

 

[annka5]

Definitely natural tanks for me. Though I am the "proud" owner of a few second-hand fishy books.
The first I bought suggested that you HAD to have a dark substrate becuase thats the colour in the wild, you HAD to have the back of the tank and one other wall looking like a river bank, and ANY brightly coloured stuff would be extremely stressfull to the fish. They would all die if this advice wasn't followed. Clearly rubbish, IMO.
Another is an aquarium design book, which is really hideous, tanks with orange gravel and light bulbs (not wired to anything, just stuck in the gravel) in the water (and nothing else), and a particularly memorable one made out of modellers foam painted bright turquoise and cut into wierd shapes. There were laods of others, totally revolting, and obviously no shelter for the fish (also, probablly loads of toxins seepeing out of the "tasteful" decor).
Though I don't think fish have the sense to realise that a plant isn't from the same biotope as they are... that too seems to go a bit far in terms of fish welfare, but not in terms of interest in a hobby.

 

[GSD]

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