A fish tank without its fish is a staging ground for an art project.
An empty fish tank or glass aquarium is an art project waiting to happen. It can serve as the canvas for pure creativity or the spark for learning more about the sea and its creatures. Use a cleaned glass 10-gallon tank with a screen top or invent a fish tank with clean plastic deli containers.
Suspended Sea Sculptures
Make papier-mâch or clay sculptures of fish and paint them fantasy colors. You can draw the fish from images of real fish or wholly imagine them. Draw fish and cut them out to use as patterns on slabs of clay or polymer clay. Incise scales, fins and features before painting or glazing. Paint papier-mâch fish when they dry. Arrange colored sand in waves on the floor of the tank and suspend the fish at varied lengths with clear filament from the screen top of the tank.
Marine Science
A classroom full of kindergartners can wind up a marine science study with an art project to keep in the classroom as a reminder of what they have learned. Layer the empty fish tank with sand or crumpled craft paper to resemble sand. Students choose a paper outline of a sea plant, coral or sea creature to cut out and color. Each student makes a single sheet explanation of his chosen image with a list of its characteristics and a drawing of the plant, fish or sea feature. Glue their cut out art to Popsicle sticks and insert them into the sand or stick them in a lump of play dough concealed in the craft paper. Collect all the pages into a book displayed next to the marine life aquarium.
Mini Sea Scenes
Recycle old deli containers to make mini-fish tanks and private seascapes for a bedroom or display around the house. You can arrange fish hot-glued to pipe cleaners in the clear plastic containers, as if they are swimming at different depths in the sea. Felt, painted foil or paper makes the sandy sea floor and the water. Glue cut-out felt or construction paper sea grasses and the suspended fish to the sea floor. Glue small shells to the scene to add an authentic touch.
Save the Sea Turtles
Use an empty aquarium as a shadow box to reveal a nest of sea turtle hatchlings emerging. Collect rubber turtle hatchlings from a hobby store or online supply, real beach sand, white ping pong balls, self-hardening modeling clay, glue and spray mount. Line the back wall of the tank with a sheet of paper covered in glued-on sand. Create the jar-shaped outline of a nest, wide at the bottom, narrower at the top, with self-hardening clay molded over cut-up cardboard egg cartons. Glue real sand to the clay nest, making sure it covers the clay completely. Seal the sand to the form with spray mount. Smash and crush a number of the ping pong balls. Place the nest form in the tank, pile whole and smashed "eggs" in the cavity and glue emerging baby turtles coming out of cracked eggs and climbing the sides of the nest. The diorama looks startlingly real.
