Bare bottom or shallow Sand bottom?

[King_Neptune]

Just curious how many of you are running bare bottom in your systems and how well you like it? I'm doing a new build in the next month and I think Ill try bare bottom this time around. Honestly im on the fence right now.

I personally don't care for the sand bottom in my 125 DT, seems to be a crap trap and little more. Ive been slowly pulling t out a few cups at a time to ween the system off it, and the areas that are bare I find useful for placing frags. Im pretty sure that I will be doing my 180g octagon tank with a clean bottom, but before I commit...I just wondered if any of you happen to find it more trouble to keep stable.

 

[Krish]

Bare bottom is the only way I will run a tank. I love a lot of flow and dealing with things in real time so I use white PVC board on the bottom to give the illusion of sand and also,it protects the glass fom falling rocks. You will be limited on some fish and critters you can keep, but other than that, I love it!

 

[NC2WA]

Sand bottom for me..BB to me just doesnt look natural, pls I love having orange diamond gobies which require sand to sift.

 

[tike]

BB for me. Ever since many years ago I had a hell of a time controlling my nitrates until I ditched the sand. I haven't had a problem with trates since.

 

[Peppie]

I also run a Barebottom on my 80gal AIO. I went that way for acouple of reasons.
1st - I wasnt able to clean around or under my rocks in my prev. 20gal AIOs, I knew it crap was building up there.
2nd- With an AIO there is no sump for extra water vol. I knew I had to keep the bottom from collecting as much crap, as much as possible to keep my water parm in check.
3rd- Ihave read many, many threads, on various sites about people having problems with their sandbeds
4th- I am all about easy maint. With alittle experimenting I was able to get flow to the top and midd. of the tank and still able to get my crap to collect into small piles at the front of the tank. easy to suck it out during WC. What doesnt make it to the front is coaxed there with a turky baster prior to the WC.
5th I feel better knowing I can look in my tank and see it is clean.
The tank has been running since early Jan 2011. It was jump started from 2-20gal tanks. I do 5-10% WC weekly and have not had a water qual. issue YET!!

Once you go BB you will never go back.
There are enough livestock to add to your tank without missing the ones that need sand. IMO

 

[BallardReefGuy]

Funny you should post this. I never heard of people doing this until I was at a LFS this weekend and among many things we talked about this very subject. He said he stopped using sand beds for all of his tanks at his shop, and it was true, no sand in his tanks. He said after years problems of and on again he figured this was the best way to avoid problems with your tank and since he switched he hasn't looked back. He wasn't saying not to ever do it but if you want long term success this was very important. I didn't like hearing this as I love a good sand bed and I also thought it was an important part of a reef tank/ bio diversity in a tank. But I haven't had a tank in 10 years and am just getting back into it...things change I guess.

 

[King_Neptune]

My main reason for contemplating the swap is my nitrates. I just cant keep them under control. I know with a bare tank Ill be ok. My only worry right now is the new wrasse I got. I really like him(and I needed a good maintenance wrasse), but will he be ok not having sand to sleep in? I was thinking about putting a small little pocket of sand in one corner...perhaps in a container or something for him to sleep in at night.

 

[Peppie]

You know what they say about putting a sand box out for the community use. You could find a cat turd in there. LOL
I also thought about putting a DIY shallow container of sand in my tank also. I was afraid the said fish wouldnt use it.
Then you have to find the fish a good home.
You could do an experiment to find out if he would. It would involve quite a bit of work and time. You could remove the sand in your current tank during WCs over the next few weeks. Then put the container of sand in and see if he uses it.

 

[dragoneggs]

Bare bottom for ease of maintenance, nitrate control as others mention and excellent reasons. But for me, I just love my sand sifting orange spotted goby building houses, my leopard wrasse diving in for a night's sleep, my sand sifting starfish cruising around, and I want to add a few Narcissus Snails that I haven't had for awhile... and these guys rise 'like night of the living dead' when you feed your tank.