Painting Overflow box?

[oimate84]

Is it possible to use latex based paint to paint an overflow box without adding any toxins to the water? Just curious because Im trying to match the color of the overflow box with my painted background of the tank...

 

[liquid]

Myself I wouldn't chance it. Ideally I would have liked to do the same with mine, but without knowing the exact ingredienets in the paint, it's really hard to know what it will do. Some paints contain anti-fouling agents, anti-mold, and/or anti-mildew agents -- all of which could leach into your tank water and cause serious problems.

The question you have to ask yourself is..."Are you feeling lucky?"

Shane

 

[baconcheese]

you can cover it with electrical tape in the colour you want. My tank has a black background and I used black electrical tape on my tunze overflow - it works.

 

[Mogo]

This is what I did to a submerged return elbow on a leap of faith:

Varathane Colours in Plastic- plastic enamel by Flecto.
- 2 coats allowing first coat to dry for a few hours before second
- let dry for a couple days
- submerse in pool for a couple weeks
- submerse in my fw tank for a few days and monitor fish behaviour. At the first sign of fish stress here, the whole idea was a gonner. There was no fish stress observed and they actually started using the painted elbow for cover.
- introduce elbow in place in sw tank, monitoring everything closely. There were no negative effects observed.

A couple points.
This was a 2" elbow introduced into a 140 gal tank so the point source for potential toxins leaching was relatively small compared to the water volume. I was "told" this paint was non-toxic when cured. I can't verify if this as this product is not even mentioned on the manufacturers website.

Even though the black return looks snazzy in the tank, I'm not going to press my luck by painting other submerged stuff. Maybe I just got lucky- no way to really tell if and how much the paint was leaching.

Furthermore, a year later the return has covered over in calcareous algae anyway making the whole exercise almost moot anyways.

More in answer to your question, IME latex paint will easily peel off a plastic surface.

 

[Anonymous]

I say leave it

I have white PVC overflows in my tank and they look soooooo tacky

but six months later, they are almost half covered with corraline. I am sure another couple of months and they will be completly unnoticable

Bryan