weighing pros and cons ? sand or no sand

mr.reeferman · Jun 22, 2015

ok i am on vacation in china for two months and my sitter keeps turtles not fish so he does not have much experience in reef maintenance i have a two and a half inch sandbed and its starting to look pretty littered due to excrement buildup he has siphened the sand bed once but just recently had neck surgery so is unable to do so my tank is 29 gal with no sump no protein skimmer just a hob full of live rock and a uv sterilizer i also have 20 pounds of crushed live rock and around 30 to 35 pounds of uncrushed boat tank has been running for 5 months but my question is since the sand has become such a littered mess i would like to remove it and start over or keep it bare bottom what are the pros and cons of a bare bottom tank i just recently picked up a hob protien skimmer here in china and plan on using it when i get back to help pick up the slack of the removed sand but is this sufficient i have no corals only two clowns a blue velvet damsel a firefish goby 1 shrimp and a pygmy dwarf angel

Oscaror · Jun 22, 2015

IMO there are two problems with barebottom:
Detritus builds up on the bottom so you need to siphon a lot
The rocks just sit on it and you can see under them so it looks unsightly, this can be solved by cutting the rock or puttying it down on the edges to blend it with the bottom, or you don't care which in that case this doesn't matter.

mr.reeferman · Jun 22, 2015

i was going to buy some live rock to crush to put around the resting live rock i also would run a peice of tube from the intake of the hob to the bottom of the tank and use a powerhead to push detritus towards the tube before it settle but idk how well this will work

mr.reeferman · Jun 22, 2015

or i could drill a small whole in the bottom of the tank and create a siphon and just build a mini sump from my 10 gal freshwater just put those freshwater fish into my other freshwater tank but i dont have much experience in building sumps

Oscaror · Jun 22, 2015

You could put powerheads facing the bottom and maybe there'd be no detritus

mr.reeferman · Jun 22, 2015

ok thanks you have helped me alot in other posts as well im very gracious

mr.reeferman · Jun 22, 2015

ok thanks you have helped me alot in other posts as well im very gracious so thank you sooooo much

Oscaror · Jun 22, 2015

mr.reeferman said:
ok thanks you have helped me alot in other posts as well im very gracious so thank you sooooo much

No problem

Glad to help!

mr.reeferman · Jun 23, 2015

anyone else have some pointers would like to hear from someone that has bare bottom tanks

eatbreakfast · Jun 23, 2015

Sand beds are a place where beneficial microfauna live and reproduce.

If you have a sand bed don't clean it with a siphon hose as you would freshwater as you end up removing good things.

Increased flow with a powerhead should help keep waste in suspension so that the fiilter can pull it out.

mr.reeferman · Jun 23, 2015

yeah my power head went out rite before i left i had two one is not very strong and is attached to my uv sterilizer i bought another here in china and have not been back to hook it up i am worried it will start a cycle . would this happen if it builds up to much before i am back