Whether you’ve decorated your home in stark modern design or love the cozy feeling of a country look, your living room decor always needs the extra pop of interesting accessories. An aquarium is a traditional way to draw the eye with movement, but stocking it with ordinary, pet-store fish can be boring. Make a personal statement about how much you love living in Jacksonville by featuring local fish in your living room tank. Decorating the tank to resemble the fish’s natural environment is a creative way to bring the outdoors inside and adds a nice Florida touch to your decor.

The Tank

The way you set up the tank depends on whether you want freshwater or saltwater fish. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Saltwater ocean fish tend to be more colorful, brightening up the room with neon hues and wild shapes, but a saltwater tank can be a lot more work to run and maintain. Freshwater tanks, on the other hand, can even be maintained by children as a daily chore, but the fish tend to be a bit more plain and unobtrusive.

Once you decide on the type of tank you want, decorate it to resemble the fish’s natural environment. Freshwater rivers and lakes often have earth-toned pebbles and rocks on the bottom, and leafy plants provide spots for the shy fish to hide. Saltwater fish live in the ocean, so decorating with a sandy bottom, occasional volcanic rocks, and larger seaweed will naturally add more visual interest.

The Fish

Finding the fish for your living room decor can be as simple or as elaborate as you wish. If you’re a DIY enthusiast or have small children — and if wildlife regulations allow it — you may want to make a project of finding and catching the fish yourself. Search local rivers or lakes for small wildlife, netting them and keeping them in a bucket. You can do the same thing with colorful sea creatures for your saltwater tank. Both kinds may be easier to find from a boat than from the shore, and you will need to investigate the fishing laws in your county. Fish for tanks may be classified as bait fish, which have separate rules from other fish, but you might still need to get a fishing permit before taking anything from the water.

No matter what type of fish you want to get, research the variety you have available in the Jacksonville area. Some fish will coexist well in a tank, while others will fight to the death, so know what you’re adding to the tank before you go searching for your fish. The safest way to be sure of this is to buy your fish at an aquarium store or pet store. Choose a larger store with a big variety, and you’ll be more likely to find a knowledgeable fish expert to help you along the way.

Photo Source: stock.xchng

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