is it possible to go bare bottom?

[i cant think]

I currently have crush coral substrate ( sort of a gravel). I really like the look of bare bottom tanks but when I started this tank 2 years ago I did not. Is it possible to take the substrate out? I know it would have to be gradual, but has anyone done this? And if so what was the best way to do it? One scoop a day removal of the gravel?

I’ve replaced sand all at once (leaving just some smaller pockets of old sand) from my 4’x2’ tank. I’ve never found an issue with it however I did keep the majority of the water from the tank and took out coral, rocks and fish to do it. I recommend preparing to tear down the tank for a day when removing sand - Or even replacing the sand like I did. I lowered the grain size over 2 years and now I have a variety of sand sizes from the finest sand I could find to sand that’s rather large. I would personally go for a fine sand and leave some crushed coral in there (under the new sand) as over time if you have sand sleeping wrasses then it does mix in and give a more natural appearance to the tank. I have a thread on why I enjoy sand so much and it has photos of my sand bed and the mixture of grain sizes as well as the life 4 months after replacing the sand.

 

[brandon429]

J

dont take this wrong it’s only the facts to help

chryso is an obligate hitchhiker


quarantine by practice isn’t only for fish disease

its for isolating new rocks frags and snails and crabs, anything wet from a pet store to be added to your tank so that when stuff like this arises during you might be able to remove that item from input into your main tank

the cause of your issue is no qt in practice it’s not anything about a tank param

run the rip clean if your tank isn’t too large

when you read in the forum these threads where folks tell each other they don’t need quarantine…and they post pics of a perfect reef that doesn’t use qt, we must all remember lucky ducks don’t represent any actual ducks in the pond.

 

[brandon429]

We haven’t even got to fish disease yet…the portion of Jays fish disease control practice that would have helped you is fallow preps, anything going into the main reef passes thru a fallow holding tank, an observation or qt tank, for three months

thats potentially long enough for these little cells to express then you’d fight them in the qt vs the display tank.

 

[rustic_reefer]

And to add to it.... None of this stuff is present in my sump, only my Display.

I had a similar problem. Dinoflagellates in display and nothing in the sump. I found that Astraea Snails will remove it from the rock in the display (but Trochus snails will not). I started moving some sand to the sump to see if the Dino's would grow there and they would not (I assume because of the lack of light). Over the course of a few weeks I moved about a quarter of the sand to the sump which stayed clean. This did not bother the corals or the fish. Then last week I moved the remainder of the sand to the sump and went bare bottom. This did stress the corals at first, but not the fish. 1 week later and virtually no sign of dino's in the display (or the sump). The corals rebounded quickly and now look much healthier than before I moved the sand out. All the while I was dosing Microbacter 7 and OceanMagik. Note: I also started measuring my phosphate multiple times a day and found that it was dropping to near zero inbetween dosing (I need to dose phosphate to keep the levels up). I switched to 8 doses a day with a goal of keeping it close to 0.1. I'm going to keep the sand in the sump for a while with the hope that I can eventually move it back up to the display.