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I remember reading somewhere that when the bottom is purple that it has been spanked enough?
My bad, this is different.
Success/Failure stories of taking out sand and going bare bottom
- Thread starter NoobishReefer22
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Weird growth into tank seam?
I have no idea what this is, or how concerned I should be… any thoughts/advice is appreciated. Should I be planning for the worst and look into buying a new tank…?
www.reef2reef.com
Another reason to remove the sand?
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I saw that post, wow!Weird growth into tank seam?
I have no idea what this is, or how concerned I should be… any thoughts/advice is appreciated. Should I be planning for the worst and look into buying a new tank…?
Another reason to remove the sand?
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Just a tip: While I haven't had much experience with bare-bottom marine tanks, I have had many freshwater breeder tanks that were bare bottom. If you're going bare-bottom, and you have a standard rimmed tank, and you're not using anything under your rocks, I've had good luck painting the outside bottom glass with Rustolium Textured spray paint. This gives a very nice sand-like look, it comes in a few colors, and this one is appropriately called "Caribbean Sand":
Texas_Aquaman
New Member
I’ve been a scuba diver for 40 years and a reef aquarium hobbyist for only 8 months. Most of you have forgotten more about reef aquariums than I will ever know….but one thing I do know is that a bare bottom tank looks weird (i.e. not natural) to me. My 8 month old tank has only a half inch of sand on the bottom but that is all I need to make it look clean, white, and natural.
Ben's Pico Reefing
Valuable Member
I have done both. The top is when I was barebottom one hundred percent water changes weekly. If I missed more than a couple weeks, corals didn't like
2nd one bottom is my current tank. Started out as barebottom but wanted more lol. I now hardly do a water change and dose all for reef as well as aminos here and there.
Both I feed strictly benepets. I had the hardest time keeping corals in sand and detritus buildup. Now I have learned to use it to feed the tank and balance bioload more.
You can do which ever but key is finding what works for you and your schedule. There isn't a right and wrong way as long as needs are met. If you do pull out all the sand you will also lower your available bioload availability.
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I get it, I do! When I first started the hobby I thought who would ever want a bare-bottom tank, they don't look natural at all. But as I've seen more tanks, and I've learned of some of the potential benefits of going bare-bottom, it's becoming more appealing to me.
I'm now like maybe 60/40 sand/bare-bottom. I have a 150 gallon tank on order to be my "main" display tank, and it will absolutely have sand. But in the same room I'm also building a 25 gallon to use as a coral/invert QT tank. Because it's in the same room as my display tank, I wanted the two tanks to look *different*, so I'm going bare-bottom in this 25 gallon. I'll be able to turn up the flow to suspended detritus and filter it out, and when I no longer need a coral QT tank because my display tank is full, I may turn this 25 gallon into a small SPS "stick tank", which needs high flow, and benefits from a bare-bottom.
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Nice work, those are both beautiful tanks!
I have done both. The top is when I was barebottom one hundred percent water changes weekly. If I missed more than a couple weeks, corals didn't like
2nd one bottom is my current tank. Started out as barebottom but wanted more lol. I now hardly do a water change and dose all for reef as well as aminos here and there.
Both I feed strictly benepets. I had the hardest time keeping corals in sand and detritus buildup. Now I have learned to use it to feed the tank and balance bioload more.
You can do which ever but key is finding what works for you and your schedule. There isn't a right and wrong way as long as needs are met. If you do pull out all the sand you will also lower your available bioload availability.
acroholicanonymous
Active Member
I did it about 10 years ago on my last tank before calling the hobby quits. I removed about a quarter of the tank at a time and did large water changes while doing it. I didn’t lose any of my acros or chalices. Just some crabs that got sucked up (but were successfully rescued).
I had a sump full of biosphere like sheets though so it probably didn’t affect much.
I had a sump full of biosphere like sheets though so it probably didn’t affect much.
Ben's Pico Reefing
Valuable Member
Thank you. I do miss the first one but this one is almost my new favorite. Even though it has sand rofl. I use it mainly to keep detritus from going under the big rock lol. Plus lots of beneficial critters
OP
OP
NoobishReefer22
Active Member
This thread blew up! Thanks for all the great insight into this. I had a follow-up question which is related to this topic but to the people that removed there sand bed is there a risk of your rocks tumbling over? I was thinking about the sand underneath my rock and what would happen to that if i sucked it up.
denverreefer91
New Member
What if I were to syphon it all to my sump in the large chamber, I don’t have a very think layer of sand, it’s just getting everywhere in a acro dominated tank. I run my wave makers pretty high and would like to add more and turn them up without having to blow everything off constantly.
wouldn't do that, it's dangerous. You'd remove it altogether vs transfer
Reef aquarium sand is bioloading we tolerate but don't benefit much from, that's why removing sand is how we control all these reefs below vs adding some. To remove the liability from a reef system allows us to transport or upgrade it without loss of cycle: fundamental takeaway from the thread below.
Before transferring sand it must be rinsed if you want safety. This is the official thread:
www.reef2reef.com
A hundred sandbeds instantly removed without any harm to any system
For sure it's likely safe if you vacuum it out, but not fully safe we can see by examples collected page one, first readable links.
The reason we aren't losing 2 reef tanks every ten pages: moving unrinsed sand is dangerous. Only that way above skip cycles all reefs, all the time.
Pretty much everything we are told about reef tank sand doesn't really apply irl. If it did, rinsing out hundreds of reef tanks in tap water would turn out bad, vs the good we show on file.
I choose to run lots of sand, I like how it props the rocks higher in the scape for my nano. I have to clean it carefully so it doesn't kill my 19 year old nano reef, I use rip clean rules above. I never stir it up.
A unique aspect of the thread is that's all other people's reefs as the test. If the example was just my own tank, like most authoritative articles I read, I could be carving up the truth to suit my narrative.
But when it's other people's reefs on the line, that's where the real rules must be applied.
Reef aquarium sand is bioloading we tolerate but don't benefit much from, that's why removing sand is how we control all these reefs below vs adding some. To remove the liability from a reef system allows us to transport or upgrade it without loss of cycle: fundamental takeaway from the thread below.
Before transferring sand it must be rinsed if you want safety. This is the official thread:
Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread
If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...
www.reef2reef.com
A hundred sandbeds instantly removed without any harm to any system
For sure it's likely safe if you vacuum it out, but not fully safe we can see by examples collected page one, first readable links.
The reason we aren't losing 2 reef tanks every ten pages: moving unrinsed sand is dangerous. Only that way above skip cycles all reefs, all the time.
Pretty much everything we are told about reef tank sand doesn't really apply irl. If it did, rinsing out hundreds of reef tanks in tap water would turn out bad, vs the good we show on file.
I choose to run lots of sand, I like how it props the rocks higher in the scape for my nano. I have to clean it carefully so it doesn't kill my 19 year old nano reef, I use rip clean rules above. I never stir it up.
A unique aspect of the thread is that's all other people's reefs as the test. If the example was just my own tank, like most authoritative articles I read, I could be carving up the truth to suit my narrative.
But when it's other people's reefs on the line, that's where the real rules must be applied.
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Beefyreefy
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Removing my sand bed was the best thing that I ever did. I have found that our aquariums are much hardier than we give them credit for. I removed pretty much 90% or more of my sand in one shot with no ill effects, although I ended up doing multiple very large water changes in 48 hours following its removal. Sand beds needs regular maintenance and my opinion and often looks ugly, growing algae and diatoms, and in time consistently raising the nutrient levels in your water. without sand it’s so much easier to keep waste in circulation to be removed by your skimmer and any mechanical filtration that you have. I won’t say that it’s science by any means but I’ve also found that marine has a very difficult time becoming prolific in a tank without a sand bed as well. It’s really just so much easier not having any sand I would never go back.
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