I have been doing a little research on tank husbandry and have come to the conclusion that although the sand bed provides a platform for biological filtration it is also a hotbed of potential contamination/ major headache. In the end it seems that it really is more for aesthetic purposes and the biological filtration provided by the sand can be better propogated by more flow and extra live rock. I am under the impression that bare bottom will provide no place for the dead bacteria established through the turgor process to sit and rot and will be easily removed by siphoning out the dust on the bottom. That is only my personal conclusion and and hoping that not have that biological platform i will still be able to keep coral. Any input would be appreciated. i guess my main question is whether i can successfully reef with a bare bottom. Maybe better ideas as well.
bare bottom in reef keeping
- Thread starter Pig8enis
- Start date
What about the fish and little critters who live in the sand. If you wish for a tank without those particualr species sure thing go bare bottom.
I would never go bare bottom, it would just look a little odd and out of place. Also I'm not sure if this is proven or not but the sand might help insulate the glass against direct pressure from the rocks. Sand makes fish more comfortable because it allows them to feel more at home because that is what they would have in their natural habitat or maybe I'm just humanizing the fish. In conclusion I would say it's more aesthetically pleasing and better for the fish to have sand substrate if anything a inch of sand at the bottom could do no harm.
My LFS has a 700+ gal reef no sand but hardly bare - it's covered in coraline. They've got all kinds a coral in there and most of it's freakin' HUGE. Only thing I'd think that might be needed is a Bacterio-plankton food suppliment as this stuff grows/propagates in the sand and is said to be 30% of corals natural diet.
yah that is what i was thinking about the coral food supply and potentially the bacterial medium. I figured that the filtration aspect would be well compensated by using that money on live rock and not having something to catch all that waste generated by generations of bacteria reproducing and dying and food sitting there and rotting. All thi9s can be alleviated by regular w/c yes but after a while stuff falls deep into the sand bed and it becomes a phosphate hot bed. i was thinking eliminate the medium and maybe put something like a sand background under the tank for the fish piece of mind and the water clarity/ coral success would make up for the lack of a sand bed. they do look nice but are a pain in the ass to maintain. I use fine aragonite sand in my cichlid tank for its ph buffering effects and while it looks nice every time i clean it i lose like 5 percent of it. which may not seem like much but it is irritating to see money go down the drain. that and i know it is a DOC trap. I am feeding my cichlids twice a day and running high flow and still seeing diatoms in there with weekly and sometimes twice weekly w/c. Iono i will have to weigh the cost versus reward of sand substrate versus extra rock. Who knows what the future holds.