How Do You Clean Your Bare Bottom Reef?

[toohipnoob]

I switched to a bare bottom tank and removed my sand about a month ago. There is some film algae the accumulated within a few weeks. It seems like I'm going to have to move rocks and corals around to get every spot clean. Do people with bare bottom tanks have to do this regularly, or do they just let it go on the ares you can't see? If I did a starboard bottom wouldn't that be even harder to clean?

As a noob, I've had two die offs after naively stirring the sand up which traps cyno-bacteria? I learned not to disturb the sand, and I only keep it less than an inch deep. My narssarius snails burrow deep and seem to help clean it. I would like to bare bottom, but I like the appearance of sand, and the creatures that live in it, so I'll bite the bullet and up the maintenance with it.

But through some new creature added?, I started getting that cyno-bacteria, that created a gray-black matt of algae on top of my sand. I used to vac it up, but kept coming back. Finally someone recommended ChemClean, which in my 24g Nano, didn't take much. It recommends removing certain maintenance items like charcoal, etc., and suggests adding aeration, which I did. And it cleared it up in a few days. It came back the other day, so I'm going to start using it as maintenance. Give this a try, before trying to hand-clean it. It's in the water, and that's where you need to remove it first.

 

[Larry Frost]

You will have some algae until the coralline takes over. I just siphon the junk from the dead spots

I concur. I used a white pvc type ceiling panel from a boat, which resembles a fine sand substrate. It is mostly purple now. By the way , beautiful dog. Mallinois ?