Setting Up a Spooky Themed Aquarium for the Holiday

Basic Tank Set-Up for  Halloween :

While setting up a theme aquarium for just a short period of time can be done, if you put the proper thought into it the tank could be left up all year.  The following description is based totally on my perception of what would be appropriate for a Halloween tank. If it is going to be temporary, I would want to choose fish that could later be kept in my display aquariums. I would choose a smaller tank, maybe a 20 gallon High or a 29 gallon tank. I would start with a mix of mostly black pebbles with a few orange pebbles to go with the black/orange motif of Halloween.  For the main decor I would choose between either ornaments of ruins and castles, or sunken ships with skeletons. Given that there will be fish swimming around, I would suggest the sunken ship. You could place a few skull ornaments to complete the effect. For a spooky Sargasso Sea effect I would use Hairgrass and plant it spaced out more than usual to cover more area and give a "see-through" effect. I like the look of a solid black background, though you could use one that has ruins in the design.

Fish in Costume:

Stocking the aquarium with the appropriate fish is actually fairly easy. You can start with a couple of the fish that come in costume, Convict Cichlids, Clown Loaches, Leaf Fish, Tiger (Striped) Barbs, Vampire Tetras, Bumble Bee Gobies  or Snakeskin Gouramis. For spooky fish, try Black Ghost Knifefish, X-Ray Catfish or Glass Fish (floating skeletons!), GloFish Danios, Ghost Shrimp or Dragon Gobies just because they look weird! You do not see them much anymore, but Black Kuhlii Loaches can make great "fake" snakes slithering around the ship wreak or among the ruins. Most of these fish will pretty much stay in one place until feeding time, but the Danios, Glass Fish and Barbs will provide constant action.

Finishing Touches:

I will admit up front that most of these finishing touches never got past my planning stage. I am not sure I am crafty enough to pull most of these off. Take a pumpkin and carve a creepy, skull like face into the front and spray paint the outside of the pumpkin black. Now when you light it up all you see is the scary face looking into the aquarium. Or if more talented you could cut out a fish skeleton to glow in the dark.  You can temporarily change out the standard daylight fluorescent lighting with a blue actinic to get a creepier, full moon at night lighting effect. You could use one of the submersible LED units to highlight the features of one of the ornaments, maybe make the skull's eyes glow red! You could place a skeleton ornament on the top of the aquarium and give it a fishing pole to look like it was trying to catch the fish. If you still have one (and I am ashamed to admit I do!) of the Creature from the Black Lagoon action ornament will make a great addition to the Sargasso Sea section of the aquarium. (I just did a Bing search and one of these ornaments was just auctioned off for $1600!! I hope mine is still in good shape!!) You can finish up the Halloween motif with some fake spider webbing around the aquarium and for the real adventurous, a small bowl with one to the reptile foggers to shroud the aquarium in a mist.