The Difference Between a Fish Tank and an Aquarium

Please don’t mistake this article for snobbery. I’m always stoked to come across another aquatist, and if you subscribe to E.O. Wilson’s “biophilia hypothesis”, the dynamic nature of an aquarium brings a sense of both peace and interest to any space that a static piece of furniture simply does not. I would like to contest, however, that there is a difference between just a “fish tank” or even just a “pretty nice fish tank” and an aquarium. It’s the difference between “hey that’s cool” and “damn”. The purpose of this post is constructive. I’m not here to rag on the “just fish tanks” or “pretty nice fish tanks”, so if you like your setup then good on you, but I would like to suggest that your “just a fish tank” could be so much more, and for so little effort and so little money.

I started looking at my fish tank again when I got hooked on the Animal Planet show Tanked. That show is definitely porn for any aquatist, and their custom tanks are wild but also wildly expensive. I can’t confirm that last statement, but when you have a TV show about designing custom anything for celebrities and elites, “wildly expensive” should be a fairly safe speculation. I don’t think you need a gigantic tank, or a custom tank, or a gigantic custom tank to have an eye-catching piece for your home. Most of these upgrades are darned cheap, pretty easy to accomplish with a few simple tools, and will elevate your presentation well above what you can get off the shelf at any PetsMart.

A Proper Stand. I remember once seeing a stunning planted tank full of beautiful, healthy discus, which is no small accomplishment, but it was propped up on a couple of cinder blocks and 2x6’s.  The humanity!  “Shabby chic” or “farmhouse chic” or “industrial chic” is all the rage these days, thank you Mrs. Joanna Gaines, but this guy’s stand was just plain shabby with no hint of chic.  A beautiful tank is owed a beautiful stand, or at least an inoffensive one.  Additionally, for the men in the audience, you’ll have a lot easier time convincing your wives to keep your tank in the main part of the house if the whole setup looks pretty, and bonus points if it matches the rest of the furniture!  Maybe it’s set up in your man cave where your wife could care less, but that shouldn’t be a reason to skimp on class.  Hemingway would never prop up his books with plastic bookends, Teddy Roosevelt wouldn’t keep his finest hunting rifle in a Rubbermaid tub, and Bond would never sip his martinis from a styrofoam cup, so the same should go for your aquarium.

PetsMart or preferably your local fish store would be a decent place to start, especially if you’re buying a new tank for the first time. Frequently, tanks and stands are sold together and that often comes with a bit of a discount if you buy the combo. The stand for my tank is an upcycled oak stand that looked pretty tired and needed some repairs after sitting in some guy’s garage for 20 years, but it was the low, low price of free-ninety-nine, and $50 of lumber, screws, mineral spirits and paint rendered it sturdy and looking fresh again. The stand should not be the focus of your display, but it should look put-together, intentional and like it was meant to go with everything else. Another option is to do the upcycling thing with a bookcase or buffet cabinet that’s about the same dimensions as your tank. Again, if you look around Craigslist or yard sales, you can often find old solid oak pieces that just need a little TLC. You will likely have to modify the back of the piece if you plan to keep power strips, canister filters or sumps in your ‘stand’ and therefore run cords and hoses up to the tank, but that’s a pretty easy fix with a drill and some spade bits or a hole saw.

Finally, if DIY’ing isn’t your thing, then that’s what we’re here for! Whether it’s an old stand that is deserving of a new life or you want to start from scratch with something custom, please check out our “Services” tab, hit the green “Contact” button and drop us a message. We look forward to hearing from you!

Canopy. Typically, this is a degree of opulence reserved for custom, usually large, furniture-grade setups, but I disagree. Every aquarium ought to have a canopy on top, no matter how large or small. Years ago, the plastic hood with a T-8 fluorescent bulb was the standard for most aquariums. Those plastic hoods looked cheap, but at least they sat up high enough to more or less hide your filter and equipment. LEDs are the newer, slimer, sexier option, but they don’t do a thing for hiding any equipment. The open top look is popular among the aquascaping set, but you have to worry about the fish jumping out, or if you’re like me and have a cat, the cat falling in. Also did we mention anything before about hiding equipment?

I don’t understand why more tanks don’t have canopies because they are nothing but wood boxes with lids on them that sit on top of your tank and are painted or stained to match your stand. There is no reason to keep them reserved for the aquatically elite. It gives the tank a more finished look and hides equipment on top of or hanging off the back of your tank. My dirty secret: in tandem with my LED track light I still do run one of those ugly plastic hood lights I was just ripping on a few lines ago. I replaced the fluorescent tube bulb with a 5,500K plug-in LED I got for $15 at my local hardware store and it works just as well as my much fancier LED, but you would never know because I have it all hidden under a canopy. Additionally, I have a couple of hang on back filters plus a bunch of cords and airline tubing running in and out of the tank as well. Everything has been well worn and covered in calcified crap from our rather hard tap water and honestly looks terrible, but you would have no idea because the whole mess is covered up with a lovely wood canopy that matches the stand.

There’s not a whole lot of options here: build one or buy one. If you go the building route, there are plans and YouTube videos out there, but you don’t have to overthink it. It’s just a box with a lid that sits on the rim of your aquarium. I’m of course 100% biased, but if you decide to buy one, I don’t know why you would buy one anywhere else because a lot of them I have seen run $250+, so please, give me a break...like I said earlier: it’s a freaking box with a lid on it. We’ll set you up with something almost identical for a fraction of the price, and customized with paint and stain to match your stand. Again, check out our “Services” tab, hit “Contact” and we’re looking forward to hearing from you!

No Plastic Trim. It’s not a huge deal, but the devil’s in the details. Those plastic rim pieces that run around the top and bottom of the tank kind of make it look cheap, but they’re somewhat of a necessary evil. You could remove the top trim piece a la ADA, but the bottom one not so much and if you aren’t careful when you remove the top piece, the tank could fail catastrophically when you have it set up and filled. Not fun. This is an easy one, though.

The easiest solution would be to cut and paint a couple of 1x4’s or 1x6’s to match and attach them to your stand such that the wood trim pieces hide the plastic trim pieces. You only need to do this on three sides of the stand since presumably one of them will be up against the wall. It’s possible to do this with your tank all set up, but just be careful. It’s unlikely, but there is a slight risk of cracking the glass if you’re too ham handed with your drill or screws. If you can, this modification is best made before the tank is set up.

If you’re DIY’ing your canopy, just measure and cut your wood such that the canopy comes down below the plastic trim to hide it. It’s good to also check the size of the wood you’re using for the canopy to make sure that you’ll still have enough room on top to clear your lights and your filters and anything else sticking off the top of the tank.

If you’re getting a stand and/or canopy custom from us, this is already factored into the design. We wouldn’t leave you with a bunch of unsightly, gaudy plastic trim pieces hanging offensively out in the open. We’re much too sophisticated for that.

Backdrop. A backdrop serves the purpose of hiding any cords, hoses or equipment running behind the tank as well as giving your display a much more finished, put together and focused look. Every pet store or aquatic shop sells some variation of laminated photo paper backdrop you can buy by the foot and tape to the back of your tank. In my opinion, this is the aquatic version of wearing a novelty tie to a classy concert or dinner party: yes, you have checked the box for wearing a tie, but your tie is gaudy, obnoxious and distasteful. Skip the laminated photo backdrop and go for less is more. Again, this is just my personal opinion, but read on and we’ll talk about alternatives that are not only better, but also cheaper and easier.

I’ve seen some really cool 3D backdrops made out of styrofoam and cement and painted to look like real rocks. They are beautiful, stunning, and easy and cheap to make yourself. These can add a great deal of depth and interest to your display as well as something unique to brag about if you’re into DIY’ing, but they take up a considerable amount of real estate in your tank and might not be the best option for a smaller tank or a tank with a narrow front-to-back dimension like a 55-gallon.

My favorite option is just a plain black backdrop. It’s simple, dirt cheap, super easy, and completely removable if you want to change things up. All you need is a bottle of acrylic paint (aka “poster paint”) from a craft store and a small paint roller. Roll a couple of coats onto the OUTSIDE of the back panel and you’re done! Glass is super smooth and doesn’t take paint too well, so the first coat will likely look like hell, but after three or four you’re golden. Since the paint is adhering to the outside of the glass, you won’t be able to see any of the globs or smudges and everything will be perfectly smooth from your view. If you decide you don’t like it or want to remove it, then it will scrape right off with a straight razor blade. I prefer black because plants really pop against it, but dark blue is also popular in marine tanks.

Current USA recently came out with a new concept called the Serene Background LED, and in my opinion it’s stunning. Starting with no existing background, a semi-opaque film designed to capture an refract light is attached to the back of your tank. A RGB LED light bar is then installed along the back of the stand and acts as uplighting to illuminate the background. A remote control allows you to toggle between an almost endless variety of color fade cycles programmed to correspond with different moods you want to evoke depending on the time of day or the type of space where the tank is set-up. Need to feel energized in the morning and your tank is set up near your kitchen table? There is a setting for that. Need to relax in your living room after a long day of work? There’s a setting for that, too. Kids are spending the night at a friend’s house and it’s time for candles, red wine and rose petals on the bed? Well, I don’t know if Current has a specific setting for that scenario, but I’m sure you could find one. If your tank is loaded with plants and decor like mine is and you can’t see much of the backdrop, the effect of the Serene background might likely be diminished. The same goes if you have a planted tank then the bright grow lights will wash out most of the background lighting. If your tank is a little more spartan and you want to showcase it in the evening when the grow lights are off, or if you have a cichlid tank without plants or a marine fish-only tank, this could be an awesome upgrade. Some Serene kits also come with an overhead LED as well as a set of speakers to pipe in tranquil audio to make your aquarium-viewing experience truly immersive and multi sensory.

Hide Equipment. This one is a little redundant because a canopy and a backdrop already accomplish a lot of this, but it’s worth mentioning as its own point. Aquatics is fun because different people geek out over different aspects of the hobby...some people love breeding, some people love reefs, other people love plants, but for me, all of that work to contain all of that natural beauty in your home is pointless unless you have a badass display. Tanks that are truly mesmerizing are the ones where you peer in and need to actively keep reminding your brain that you’re looking into an artificially created glass box in someone’s living room and not an actual underwater paradise perfectly excised from and preserved straight out of nature. All your hard work is pointless if there is a big ugly power head stuck in the very front of your display or your heater is floating around randomly like a piece of junk in the great Pacific garbage patch. Let’s put on our Marie Kondo hats and tidy things up, shall we?

A proper canopy does a perfect job of hiding everything above the tank. Check. I love the plain opaque painted black backdrop because it perfectly hides all hoses and cords behind the tank, but also plain black filter intake pipes, heaters and power heads placed discretely up in the corners more or less disappear into the background, too. It’s not perfect but it’s pretty good. Here are a few other suggestions:

Skip In-Tank Anything. The best way to do this would be with a sump. They’re standard fare for reef setups, but not so much for freshwater tanks, which is understandable because freshwater does not require nearly the amount of gear that a reef tank needs. The only things that could possibly be visible in the display tank are the overflow drain and the return pipe or pipes. The downside is that a tank that is pre-drilled for overflow drains is expensive and you can’t make this change to an existing setup without breaking it down. In actuality in most cases you can’t make this change to an existing setup, period, because most larger tanks have tempered glass and tempered glass can’t be drilled. Pre-drilled tanks are drilled first and are then tempered after. If your tank can’t be drilled, then you could opt for a hang-on-back overflow. Rather than function as a gravity-fed drain, these work by siphoning water up and over the rim of your display tank and down to the sump. They run about $100 and even though they are well built, widely available, and the commercial versions seem reliable, I don’t have any experience with them and would worry about a siphon break causing a flood in your living room. Canister filters are a viable and popular option for freshwater setups and have only an intake and return pipe visible in the display. The downsides to them are that they are expensive and even under the best of circumstances can be prone to leaking. My favorite option is the very cheap, very unsexy hang on back filter.

All Black Everything. I love the idea of a sump in even freshwater tanks because all your clutter is removed from the main display, but that’s not an option for some folks. Sometimes the next best thing is just to control what your viewer focuses on and what he or she does not. Like we mentioned earlier, a plain black background plus plain black pipes, hoses, heaters, power heads etc. is almost just as good and significantly easier.

Install Your Heater Horizontally. Sure, maybe it’s a little harder to reach, but once you have your aquarium temperature dialed in, then how much do you really mess around with your heater? If you use those little suction cups instead of mounting it vertically you can mount it horizontally on the back wall of your tank and it doesn’t take much decor to conceal it from there.

Get Creative With Your Decor. Again, sometimes it’s all about controlling what the viewer can and can’t see. Maybe you can’t perfectly remove all the life support equipment from your tank, but discretion can be the next-best thing. Cleverly placed plants or hardscape can obstruct the view of unsightly equipment. Cable ties and suction cups can be used to attach things to the glass on the side panels to hide things in the back corners. You could get clever with some plastic mesh screening and attach that to equipment and even attach fake or live plants to the screening to effectively turn your equipment into a piece of hardscape. Use your imagination, and don’t be afraid to try something, fail, and then refine it. It’s really gratifying to get stuck on a problem for days or weeks or even months and then figure out a solution you can’t believe you didn’t think of in the beginning. Nothing is permanent in this hobby.

Conclusion. If your relationship with your tank is slightly mediocre, or taking care of it is becoming a chore, think about some of these suggestions the next time you’re looking at your tank. If your tank is kind of “meh”, then maybe it’s because it’s just a fish tank. You could likely have a diamond in the rough sitting right in the middle of your living room and one or two simple changes could change it from “meh” to “damn” in ways you may not expect. When I first built my tank years ago I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it, but it’s been through many evolutions in the intervening time, and each time it gets better and better. Have fun with it, but if you want a sweet aquarium without needing to mess with it and without paying any more than what you would at Petsmart, that green “Contact” button up at the top right means we’re only an e-mail away.