yes Rob. After all the fuss of "shall i go bare , or sand, or black sand, and also different colour back ground, I ended up with leaving no background and also no substrate. LOL
I've always had sand for last 7 years, so decided to go bare bottom for a while.
The dats are stable and nice enough, thus i don;'t even notice its bare tank now.
Also, the tank is cleaner and water circulation seems more complete.
I actually removed 3 nr. 16 litre buckets of sand, and replaced with water which can only help water quality, a bit.