Fish Tank Decorations

Here are the basics of what you'll need to decorate your tank, plus some cool, wild or classic fish tank decorations that will get people's attention.

There are three basic kinds of fish tank decorations: the gravel, the aquarium background, and the decorations that furnish the inside of the tank. We've written individual articles about selecting and buying the gravel and the aquarium background, and about whether to choose live plants or fake plants, so this article is totally focused on the big decorations like scuba men, greek columns and skull caves. Read our article about how to decorate a fish tank to learn about how to actually put all the pieces together in the right order.

So these are the fish tank decorations that go beyond plants, gravel and background images. Some people will choose not to put any of these in their tank, and that's fine. If you want a truly natural looking aquarium, you don't really want to go beyond plants and maybe a rock or a piece of wood anyway. But if you just have to have that skull cave, we've scouted out the coolest one.

Rock Decorations

These are the big rock structures that usually take up at least a third of the visual space of the aquarium. I am not talking about gravel here. These "rocks" can be plastic or real rock. The RockGarden Small Sculptured Lava Rock is a nice choice for a little tank. If you have a 20 gallon or larger tank, go with something bigger. Look for "lavarock" if you want something dark colored or "wonderstone" for lighter rock with pretty brick-colored streaks in it.

Wood Decorations

You can buy some really nice pieces of driftwood or bog wood online at Ebay (be sure the seller packages them so no delicate parts break off), or you can buy "fake" wood ornaments from a petstore. I like the choices from Ebay, because there's no way to know what shape the driftwood you are buying from an online store is going to look like. You can, of course, go into a fish store and pick out one of their pieces. Amazon has a nice option for a larger (like 55 gallon tank) with the PETCO Tree Log Aquatic Decor for $22.

Some wood pieces are attached to slate. These will cost more, but are much better to get. Wood, as you know, floats, so unless you are patient enough to wait two weeks for submerged wood to be totally filled with water so it does not float, you are going to need to weigh the wood down. This can be quite a project, so, if possible, get wood that comes with a weight.

Wall Decorations

By wall I mean longer decorations that are, actually, usually walls, like the Exotic Environments Cobblestone Castle Walls Aquarium Ornament. This is too small for a large tank, but it would fit nicely in a ten gallon tank. The green ivy on it will look great with the other greem plants in your tank, and the arch and window openings will allow your fish to swim through it, which is cool to watch.

Caves

Its not a cave, but I like the ancient vases from aquariumguys.com. For a skull cave, aquarium guys can also set you up with a standard skull cave, or a large T-Rex skull. Their crocodile skull is pretty cool, too.

By the way -- if you soak standard clay pots for a week or so, changing the water every other day, you can use clay pots as decorations or hiding places in a fish tank. I used about a dozen small clay pots in a 30 gallon tank with about a dozen african cichilds, and it was great entertainment watching them jockey for the best pot... it was constant competition.

You can also make "caves" by putting a few large rocks of pieces of wood together so they create a crude structure. Some of the most interesting fish tank decorations are made this way.

Scubamen and More

I never would have thought it, but I love the SpongeBob fish tank decorations. Like the SpongeBob SquarePants® Easter Island Ornament and the SpongeBob SquarePants® Pineapple House. They're so cool, and they look great in aquariums. They are small enough to fit in a ten gallon tank, but you won't want much else in the tank for decorations after that.

For those of us who love scubamen, the best one I found was... on ebay. None of the major retailers sell scubamen decorations any more. What a tragedy.

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