Now this is a deep sand bed

+1^^

 

Not very impressive for a museum.

 

When I got my first tank, I was told that you wanted to see the color & stuff in the sand, that it was a sign of a mature tank. Therefore, I've always been proud of it.

The ocean is not pristine, and I'll never understand why so many people want their tanks to have pristine white sand and everything immaculate. Just not the way it works! You're putting nature in a box in your living room, it should still be allowed to be natural, right?

Museums are there to educate, and that display educates...it's not an art museum!

 

If you want an ugly sandbed, more power to you. Don't be mistaken though and think that it's a sign of it's "maturity". It's not a sign of a mature tank. It's a sign you don't have enough sand-stirrers. Most of the colors that you see against the glass is nothing by cyanobateria. The phosphorus is sunk in the sandbed. The glass acts like glass fiber and takes the light down below the layer of the sandbed, then cyano grows. If I have a choice of white sand against the glass or that ugly cyanobacteria, I'll pick white every day of the year.

If you see cyanobacteria on a real reef, that's not natural either. It would mean that humans screwed that up too with sewage runoff or runoff from fertilizers, etc.

 

Nice...

 

Well, I certainly could have said that with more tact. How about I say that as, "If you don't mind all of the cyanobacteria....".