Going Bare Bottom

[colin779]

Get your minds out of the gutters.... Haha

Seriously though, last night i started pulling the sand out of my 90, it is about 1 - 1/2 inches deep. It will probably take a couple weeks to get it all out. The reason is I feel like I have been fighting a losing battle to keep the sand bed looking nice, and the stuff that gets siphoned out of it is pretty gross. It will be nice to be able to point my power heads wherever i want (i have about 5900gph) and not have sand moving around and covering things. I will probably toss in a few more rocks and add some frags on the bottom of the tank now which i couldn't do before.

If i decide i don't like it i am just putting all the sand in a bucket so i can thoroughly clean it and ill just store it (that stuff was expensive so i dont want to just toss it anyways....).

Any thoughts, experiences, or tips you guys can think of?

Thanks,
Colin

 

[chelseagrin]

when ever i do bare bottom i put a couple hardy zoa or star polyp frags on the bottom of the tank and they cover it like carpet! the only problem is is that until they cover the bototm the tank looks like crap. im really not a fan of entirely bare bottom. imo it just showcases all the organic waste that collects on the bottom of the tank. but the looks of the coral on the bottom is even better than sand.

 

[tyson256031]

I have been debating on doing a bare bottom or shallow sand bed on my new tank, hard choice to make as plan to have LPS on the sand bed and debating if sand will hurt more then make it look natural...

 

[1guydude]

ya im going all BB now! Ive got two tanks i need to move to my new house and ive decided when i move em that im gonna just take the sand out! No need for it imo! Im just gonna try and get some more rock! I dont know how im gonna work the rock on the bottom though cuz i dont want that crap (detiuits) to build up! I figure i could just turkey baster watever lies on the bottom!

 

[TheKraken]

A common method of doing BB is to set a plastic board under the rocks with time it turns purple and I like it much more than glass. I when with white this time but would consider black also as it hides the crud a little better.

 

[colin779]

I like the idea of some zoos or something across the bottom. I have a colony that is already doing that across the sand right now. I'm thinking after a few months you wont notice the glass (shouldnt be the focus anyways). I am pretty patient with my reef so it will be ok. My fiance doesnt want to to change the aquascaping though, which i'm not sure how long will last because it is set up to maximize sand area right now. I told her i would give it some time though, who knows, it may look fine as is when im done. My skimmer should be able to pick up the slack the sandbed was taking care of (if any). Its a SWC 160 Cone, so its rated for way above a 90.

The turkey baster is your friend!

 

[colin779]

A common method of doing BB is to set a plastic board under the rocks with time it turns purple and I like it much more than glass. I when with white this time but would consider black also as it hides the crud a little better.

I thought of doing that but since i'm not moving my tank or willing to empty it out it will just be straight sand removal. If the BB experiment goes well, when i do move or get a bigger tank i will try that method. The white probably does a good job maximizing the light, how do you think the black would do? Black usually kind of sucks up light.

 

[TheKraken]

How do you think the black would do?

Any part that gets light will have Coraline algae growing so the color in the tank will be the same. White makes the aquarium look brighter and black makes the rock work and fish standout. People whom paint the bottom of the tank seem to choose black.

 

[Peppie]

As it has been posted above. The bottom will soon be covered by coraline. IMO the star board, if not installed tight all the way around will trap crud around the edges and underneath.
This is how I held my rocks off the bottom.

I have also found that it is pretty easy to tweek you PH to get good flow in the tank and still able to pool the crud on the bottom to a place you can get to easily when do a WC.
I also added a closed loop to be sure I had good flow at the very bottom of the tank

 

[colin779]

Black sounds like it would be the way to go, especially if it kind of helps things stand out more. I'll keep that in mind if i ever end up doing something like that on the bottom. I would assume you need to silicone all of the edges of the star board to seal it?

That's a good idea to keep the rock off the bottom. That will be another thing i keep in mind for a future setup.

Currently i'm just going for the suck all the sand from under the rock method in hopes of getting like 95% of it out of the system. I pulled all of the sand from the main bed out last night, then sucked out whatever i could while doing a 10g water change. I'm thinking by next week i should be able to get most of the rest of it out.

 

[Krish]

Here's what I always use in my bare bottom tanks.

http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/f14/info-pvc-board-59909/

As for crap getting underneath, I always siliconed it down and then sealed around the perimeter with silicone as well. Never had an issue. If you look at the first tank in the link you can see the edges are siliconed/sealed


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[estanoche]

hey colin!! I feel so cheated Where are the before and after sand pics!! Lets SEE how this change is working out first hand!! Plus, I want to see the coralline grown on the bottom of your tank!!

 

[colin779]

Crap! I have to find a before picture, ill take an after picture tomorrow after work, not quite all of the sand is out yet though.

 

[StacyS]

Love, love, love my bare bottom tanks! Took the sank out of my reef tank last year and it made cleaning 5x faster.. Covered it's self in coraline alage very quickly. I thought the tank might be dark without the sand and it wasn't. My seahorse tanks are bare bottomed too and I wouldn't do it differently! Enjoy!

 

[colin779]

Ok, little update for you. Did another 10 gallon water change last night and pulled out about half the rock to remove the sand that was under it. Sand was super packed and when siphoned out everything through the tube was black. I will try to get some pictures up tonight, about half the tank is a pile of rock rubble right now =( I am planning on getting the rest of the sand out this week and re aquascaping this weekend. I'm going to make the aquascape a little more frag friendly then it is right now since i'm out of space.

 

[1guydude]

So u didnt empty ur tank and put all the rock and water and livestock in buckets? You just pulled the sand out? No spikes?

 

[colin779]

Nope, i have just been siphoning it out little by little with water changes. Last night i just started getting the sand that was under the rocks so i pulled about 1/3 of them out into a bucket, siphoned the sand, then dropped them back in (probably about 30 minutes). My sandbed is only about an inch deep and was so packed up with stuff was probably leeching it out into the water instead of helping with filtration. I have 120+ pounds of rock in the tank, plus a really good skimmer.

 

[colin779]

When i first set up the 90, the algae was due to neglect when the 29 was set up in the garage for about 6 months....

This one still had algae issues, also had 14k lighting on tank.

Tank has now had 20k lighting over it for about 6 months, this is prior to my escapades moving rocks last night. The left side is now all jumbled up and the sand under all that rock is gone.

Its amazing how much everything has grown, those first picture is about 2 years ago, second one about a year ago, and the bottom one is last month.

The aquascape i will work on this weekend is going to be less wall like, i had it like that to kind of maximize the sand bed. Next one i think is going to start close to the front of the glass and i'm going to try to make it look a little deeper and more natural. I'm also out of space for coral how it is now...

 

[BCT182]

My new tank in progress is bare bottom. I picked up 1/2 starboard with the uv protection. The point of the starboard is to keep the rocks off the glass bottom of the tank. It's important to silicone the edges so to prevent detritus from dropping into the gaps and getting below the board. A bare bottom tank only looks poorly if it's not maintained. The idea is to easily siphon the detritus out, not left in the tank to foul the water as someone stated above.

My purpose is that in my cube I intend to keep primarily SPS and will hopefully have enough water flow to keep solid waste suspended in the water colum to; feed SPS, skimmed out, and removed with a filter sock. What is left will be siphoned out.

 

[colin779]

So here's the finished product, what do you guys think??

I give up on why this is sideways, i saved the a copy of the RAW file rotated on my computer, uploaded the rotated file onto photobucket (its oriented correctly on my photobucket) but for some reason when linked its oriented the way i took the picture...

Sorry, you will have to use your imaginations because i give up =)