Substrate Depth for Coralife LED Biocube 32

kevyg · Dec 13, 2017

Hey everyone!

I am almost to the point where everything has shown up and I will be setting up soon. Something that has come up that I haven't really given much thought to was the substrate. I have Arag-Alive Fiji Pink. I ordered a 40 lb bag and was wondering how deep I should make my substrate. There are so many varying opinions out there, that I have no clue. I know that I will want to keep some sifters in the tank, clown fish, some softies, and LPS.

Additionally, should I be using a vacuum on the sand in this small of a tank? I'm sure this depends on Deep sand bed or shallow sand bed, so if you have a suggestion for either sand bed, if you wouldn't mind including a suggestion as to vacuum or not, that would be much appreciated too.

As always, Thanks for all of your help!

NowGlazeIT · Dec 13, 2017

I put 30lbs of sand in my bio cube it was around 2inches and i vaccumed it every other water change

drblakjak55 · Dec 13, 2017

I’ll take the extra 20 pounds of Fiji sand. Set up the rocks with a very stable foundation of branches on the glass bottom than add the sand. Inch and a half. I stir the sand up releasing clouds of junk before water changes. Over the two years I’ve probably thrown out half what I put in as it migrates toward the front. I do have a million spaghetti worms doing a great job in a well fed tank

brandon429 · Dec 13, 2017

your depth could be chosen by special organisms you may want, like gobies.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

do that to prep your sand, and then do it again if you ever get an invasion. youll never have a bad sandbed after that and the depths wont matter in terms of nutrient control if its kept clean

kevyg · Dec 13, 2017

brandon429 said:
your depth could be chosen by special organisms you may want, like gobies.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

do that to prep your sand, and then do it again if you ever get an invasion. youll never have a bad sandbed after that and the depths wont matter in terms of nutrient control if its kept clean

Awesome, that post was incredibly informative. Intuitively I thought the silt was a horrible bi-product of the live sand and was warned over and over again to not rinse it. ALL of my microbiology education and didn't even think about how they would survive the process in the porosity of the sand grains.

That being said, I will probably vacuum/stir every water change (so weekly) and I will rinse my Arag alive before putting it in the tank. I'm also going to dose bio-Spira so there will be more bacteria introduced.

Thanks for the answer and the link to some killer information!

kevyg · Dec 13, 2017

drblakjak55 said:
I’ll take the extra 20 pounds of Fiji sand. Set up the rocks with a very stable foundation of branches on the glass bottom than add the sand. Inch and a half. I stir the sand up releasing clouds of junk before water changes. Over the two years I’ve probably thrown out half what I put in as it migrates toward the front. I do have a million spaghetti worms doing a great job in a well fed tank

Lol, I think I'll hang onto it in case I find myself ever needing any substrate. (I can make frag pucks perhaps?

brandon429 · Dec 13, 2017

thank you tons. I feel anyone should take their own medicine before expounding so I opened with a full tap water rinse of my old sandbed that isn't in any distress

thanks tons and take us some before and after pics if you like during preps, we like the extra info and others use it as test material in their tank setups as well. nice to meet

we like to show that not only do the bac survive, but even if they didn't (my hot tap + peroxide extended) it doesn't matter, they're incidental bioloading in all but the most unique reefs (those without live rocks for ex)

even if im blasting mine out, don't care. they're back in 48 hrs pretty darn nicely since the biofilms weren't truly scraped out of the mini canyons on the sand grains.

so all this time it seems to me in hindsight we were told very mismatched microbial info for the types of substrates we work with, and, we were oversold on their importance past a certain measureable set point too (making double concern/hesitation points in our training)

the measured setpoint ties into the thread titled the microbiology of reef tank cycling...anytime a setup can digest 2 ppm ammonia in 24 hours and the minimum submersion times have been met for substrate cycling to complete, that's sufficient substrate coverage, surface area, for all the reef we'll need. we can add nine canister filters at any time to a reef, give them a month, and that's nine more football fields of precious bacteria guaranteed in the mix.

then we can remove all the canister filters, and the sandbed too (given the test tank was a live rock system) and the test system doesn't recycle, because live rocks can digest 2 ppm in 24 hours, and because that's a giant fish bioloading nobody is really keeping in a reef. The amount of substrate it takes to nitrify a given bioload is probably a tenth of what a common reef tank uses, that means all the rest can be taken and added, or blasted out, at will, with no consequence or there would be a bunch of dead reefs in that thread.

B