Want to go bear bottom

Hello,

Currently have the finest grain sand in my tank and its driving me nuts. Currently having red hair cyano issues, I cannot place the powerheads where i would like flow due to the sand kicking up , making the tank cloudy. I have to vac my sand bed every 2-3 days to keep it looking good.

Currently running phosban reactor but its not giving me much results. I do 10% water changes every week and use RO water. phosban tests come out as no phosphates.

So......

I want to go bear bottom. I've seen many tank images of BB and i think they look nice with the benefit on easy maintenance.

Here is my plan.

Take 3/4 of the current water out the system. Discard the 1/4 water with the most of the sand. I'm going to finally go to change my sump plan to house a fuge so i will keep some sand for that.

Remove all sand, place egg crate at the bottom add 3/4 water and top up with fresh and re put live rock.

Would there be issues with the tank chemistry? Crash?

Anyone done this before?

Thank you

 

Not sure, but I am curious because I am considering possibly doing the same thing. I will have to follow along.

 

I recommend a fine grained sand or no substrate rather than a small, furry winney the pooh.

Sorry. I highly recommend bare bottom, but don't have much helpful advice as to how to get there.

 

I've been reading about how many people lowered here nitrates to 0 by removing there substrate and how much easier it was the maintain.

Thread on 3reef from another user doing the same?

 

Bump?

 

I have a very hard time believing that people lowered their nitrates by going bare bottom. The deep sand bed contains a key anaerobic zone (which removes nitrates). Unless you have literally a ton of porous live rock (which also has anaerbic areas) or some other denitrifying mechanism then you've got more nitrates in a bare bottom scenario, not less.

 

Unless you have a lot of flow and great filtration. It is pretty easy to keep a BB low on nitrate, because it's easier to keep the food in suspension. That way you can skim it out pre breakdown.

IMO, it's not that much easier than a sand bed after it fully cycles. The only time sand storms have been a major issue for me is when I first set my tanks up.

 

I completely agree grim.I would skip the egg crate because it will just become a nutr. trap getting all detritus caught in the empty spaces.I would put down a piece of star board for the protection of the bottom glass.

 

Cyano can also be a result of poor skimming. What type of protein skimmer do you have?

BB tanks are actually the opposite on maintenance. First, you need a ton of flow to keep particulates in the water column longer so they have a better chance of getting to the sump. Still, a lot won't get there and you will get daily detritous piles that accumulate in low flow areas. You won't have a good clean up crew without a sand bed so you need to clean these every day.

While you might be saying "I clean my cyano that much now anyway," you need to realize that the cyano is not a result of the sand bed. You should really find the culprit.

Additionally, if you've got issues with sand blowing around then get a larger grained sand that can take more flow.

Potentially yes. Additionally, the guys at World Wide Corals, who have some of the best bare bottom tanks I've ever seen, do A LOT of water changes to keep the nitrates down and over-skim the heck out of the tanks. They also tell me that a bare bottom tank takes 12-18 months to get fully dialed in, compared to like 6-12 for one with a sand bed.

One other thing you may be reading (and I had bought into) was that after some number of years you need to change your sand bed out or it becomes a nitrate factory, expelling everything it collected over the years, or that you can get hydrogen sulphide pockets that can suddenly burst and kill everything in the tank. Dr. Ron Shimek essentially debunks these in a recent article in Coral magazine. He does concede that over time the sand bed can accumulate undesirable materials, but those materials are not what people think. They tend to be heavy metals and other toxins that bond to compounds in the sand bed.

To quote:

"A second myth-take that is made to say that sand beds cause something called "old-tank" syndrome."

"Can the build up of these toxic materials occur in a reef tank? Certainly, but it takes long and diligent work on the part of the aquarist to foul things up that badly."

"... if the sand bed's infaunal organisms are ignored, allowed to perish, and are not replaced, excessive nutrients can be deposited in the sand bed and the metals in them can build up to fairly high levels. Normally, with reasonable care and regular maintenance, this doesn't occur, but is a possibility."

He also debunks the idea of hydrogen sulphide build up to death levels in the article. It is worth reading. Because of the plethora of posts talking about old sand beds, I had completely bought into the idea that after 5 years or so I'd need to do a major sand bed redo. I don't know about that now.

 

I agree, but it takes a much larger skimmer and a ton of flow. Additionally, he was mentioning that people "lowered their nitrates" by going BB. Unless they were doing something wrong on their sand bed-tank (e.g. under skimming, low flow), I find it hard to believe. The sand bed isn't the culprit, something else is.

I agree with this 200%. My 185g was BB for the short time I had it set up and the detritous build up was a headache for me. And that was with two Vortech MP40s, three Sicce Voyagers cranking out about 1300 gph each and a Mag 12 plumbed to blow out multple places under the rock (about 60x tank volume when I factored everything in).