Fish fighting with their reflection in background

[kmanbig]

I recently added a Flame Angel and Long Nose Hawk Fish to my 70gallon glass corner tank. I have an existing black background on all sides of the tank except the front (of course) and the background seems to enhance the reflection. Both fish seem to act aggressively towards their reflections. I took the background down on one side just to see what would happen, and they stopped going mad on that side and now fight with their reflections on the other side.

Naturally I want to make the tank as stress free as possible but the tank really looks bad without the background. Will they stop fighting with their reflections soon or should I bite the bullet and take the background down altogether? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Larry

 

[navyguyame]

I had the same problem in a previous tank. I used a flat paint called plastidip the glare is almost gone and water will not get under it like with the sheet backgrounds. The only concern i would see is avoiding getting the paint in the aquarium. I did mine when the tank was empty and outside.

 

[RockStacker]

Fish do that all the time, specially territorial fish in relatively small aquariums.
They have no concept of mirrors so they really think those are other fish reciprocating their aggressions.

My daughter has a 10gallon freshwater aquarium with a male betta as the primary resident. She placed one of those "Littlest Pet Shop" fish toys with fancy fins in front of the aquarium and the betta fish went ballistic.

 

[Bifferwine]

You could try changing the background to make it less reflective. It may be hard to do since your tank is already set up, but most people spray paint the back black. For one of my tanks, I bought a plastic shower curtain, cut it to fit, then held it in place with some small pieces of tape. Much easier than those sticky backgrounds.