We have a fairly large tropical fish tank set into one of our walls, and it's got an array of tank accessories and whatnots in it. Some of the ornaments have been chosen by the kids, so there are plenty of pirate themes objects in there, but one of my choices was the Blue Ribbon Column Ruins fish tank ornament. These can bought from Pets at Home stores for around £7, but I chose mine from a pile of tank ornaments my friend was giving away after her fish died (she wasn't very good at fish keeping), so our columns were free.

I find history interesting, so I couldn't resist adding a bit of historical charm to the fish tank with these columns, designed to look like Roman or Greek ruins.

The columns are made from polyresin, which means they are very tough, and completely safe for your fish. The base of the ornament is T-shaped and the columns rise around 8cm up from the base. As the widest point the whole ornament is about 8cm wide, so for a fish tank it's actually a decent size. Considering it was free I can't complain at all, as I do really like this ornament.

The fish like it because there are lots of gaps for them to swim through and they enjoy darting between the columns, and I like it because of the detail that's gone into the columns, they look really authentic (as far as fish tank ornaments go) and they are very visually appealing to me.

Everytime we clean the tank, we give the columns and the other ornaments a good scrub with a hard bristled brush, and although there are some areas at the top of the columns that are harder to clean, in general, cleaning of this ornament is easy and algae comes off easily with a quick scrub.

This is probably my favourite ornament in the tank - all I have to do now is wait for the kids to grow up and leave home so I can replace some of their gaudier ornaments with more classical piece like this! Well recommended.