Bare bottom tank. Advantages? Disadvantages?

[ravedood]

Are there any advantages or disadvantages to having a bare bottom (no sand) tank?

I know the sand acts as a bio filter but if you have enough live rock and proper mechanical filtration( skimmer, filter socks, etc.) will this be enough?

I prefer to use as much natural filtration as possible and not rely so much on mechanical filtration but the BB tanks look a lot nicer to me.

 

[blackthunda77]

Pros - Easier to keep clean in regards to food/detritus. Can keep high flow corals and not worry about blowing your sand around with high flow pumps.

Cons - cant keep any fish that require sand like certain wrasses and pretty much all gobies and jawfish. (you can keep a piece of tupperware in the tank with sand for those fish but lets not get into technicalities, lol). If rocks fall you dont have that buffer between your glass, unless you go with starboard or something. And i personally think its ugly and sterile.

 

[Stylo328]

Beauty or lack thereof is in the eye of the beholder

 

[Ted_C]

Sand short term "may" act as a biofilter. Long term - no matter what you keep in there - its going to require vaccuming and heavy maintenance.

I had mine set-up for 6 months as per Shimek's reccomendations. Deep sand bed (4" in Display, 5" in fuge) with microbrittle stars, copepods, amphibods, snails, bristleworms, spaghetti worms. After this time, I started to get brown crud on top of the sand.

I took a turkey baster to the brown stuff on top of the sand and was horrified to see black puffs of stuff coming up from my sand bed. After only 6 months. that's also running 2x mp40s and 2xmp10s in the main display at 90% capacity. With Tropic Eden Sugar Fine sand. The worms were pooing in the sand and the poo was just staying there with nothing else (down the chain) to consume the poo. I siphoned out my sand through water changes over 2 months.

So I would say the need to constantly maintain the sand bed would be a huge disadvantage.

BlackThunda already caught all of the disadvantages of bare bottom that I know about.

 

[blackthunda77]

Beauty or lack thereof is in the eye of the beholder

And thats why i said "I personally" :rollface:

 

[ravedood]

I am assuming the BB tanks are painted on the bottom outside of the tank correct?

 

[Kayo2289]

Ted_C you may have the best avatar I have seen on RC :dance:

 

[Jackwkahn]

barebottom is healthy but ugly
sand is unhealthy (unless heavily maintained) but pretty
pick your poison

 

[ravedood]

Wont the coralline algae eventually grow on the bottom?

 

[Ted_C]

Thanks! If you live in Florida - you need to at least like Ace Ventura

My Barebottom is not painted (and the stand is dark espresso under the tank). I had this same question about reflective light and the health of SPS on the underside.

Turns out - its not a big deal. Yes the Corralaine will grow on the bottom - giving you the reflective light that will keep the SPS happy on their bottoms or so it has happened in my tank.

 

[SaltyReefs]

I went bare bottom with my current set-up and honestly as much as I like the look of sand, I can honestly say I love the bare bottom look now. It really is less of a headache. Go with starboard, it just about the same if not cheaper than sand either way. You wont go back to sand after you tried it.

 

[ravedood]

What us the starboard for?

 

[treetopflyn]

Advantage- It's easy to clean the bottom of tank.
Disadvantage- I have never seen one that looked natural.

 

[treetopflyn]

i personally think its ugly and sterile.

I agree!

 

[Sagz70]

Same dilemma..
I am in the process of setting up a new tank as well. It will be a shallow 12" so I am not sure which way to go. I am leaning more towards a shallow sand bed vs what I have now, which is about 3"
Personally, I do not like the look of bare bottom and since my tank is shallow, it won't be as tough to clean.

 

[treetopflyn]

I never have understood the issue with keeping the sand clean. Just use 1.5" -2" of coarse sand like Reef Flakes, get a couple of sand sifting fish, hermit crabs, couple of cowrie, a couple brittle starts, minimize contact points of LR/Sand and high flow. My sand stays spotless. Been doing that way for 20+ years with no issues.

 

[Railcar79]

I personally don't like bare bottoms, ease of cleanup is a plus, but no substrate just looks wrong. No sand also limits your choices for fish and inverts. Not to mention bacteria in the sand for filtration. If you are willing to do all the work of a sw setup, is it really that much to bad sand?

 

[MBC2012]

We are going with the starboard in our new tank. There is a place locally we can take our pick of color. I think it will take getting use it the look but this is what we decided. We have ben suctioning our current bed with each w/c. Our Wrasse will have a portion of the tank as a sand bed with LR.

 

[120reefermadnes]

Im giving BB a try this time around

Im using starboard for mine

 

[traymitch1]

Wont the coralline algae eventually grow on the bottom?

I have bare bottom and my tank is fine. Coralline is all over the bottom. Before I set it up I sprayed the bottom outside black.