Sand Good or bad

[codyreed29]

I Am at the point of buying sand for my tank. I've had fine sands and didn't like the messness nor look and It just gets nasty. I have now learned to go with lage size sand aragonite style. The problem is nutrients I have pretty high alk for some reason and do not know how to keep it low. So some nutrients NO3 and PO4 are going to be present. So If I put sand theres gonna be nutrients. Keeping my tank barebottom keeps my tank free of nutrients but my ph doesn't stay very consistent.

I think putting only a small amount of sand that i cn clean it all with a 10 gallon water change will do but maybe not. I'm going with fowlr with invertabrants for a few months before adding coral. So should I put sand now or wait till i want some corals?

 

[rlpardue]

Now.

 

[tanked37]

Sugar fine deep sand bed (5 inches) and Nasrius snails. I literally perform no sand bed maintenance ever. 0 nitrates every week I test, and I dose phyto-feast and oster-feast twice a week. But yeah, get your sand bed in sooner rather than later.

 

[codyreed29]

I have way to much flow for fine sand. I have hermmit crabs getting blown across the bottom glass of my tank.

 

[codyreed29]

Maybe This will work taking about 3 lbs of live rock and smashing it into pieces about 1 cm in diater then mixing it with some large sand. keeping the sand in between the rock will keep it from getting blown everywhere plus i could use another 3 to 5 lbs.

 

[rlpardue]

Pick up some Tropic Eden Reef Flakes. I have 9k gph in a 150 and the sand stopped blowing around after a day or two.

 

[codyreed29]

thnx I/m going to try smash rock and sand mix At least smashed rock on the opposite side of the powerhaed about a foot after that should be ok but i'll loook up the ref flakes.

 

[tanked37]

I have way to much flow for fine sand. I have hermmit crabs getting blown across the bottom glass of my tank.

Yeah, me to. Blue hermits also get rolled over. I have snails (ceriths) that barely hold onto glass. It takes time for it to stay put, but you can do it unless you're really particular about where the sand stays (ie I have drifts and such, but it stays put now). But whatever you want to do, I just love no sandbed maintenance.

 

[dastowers]

One vote for bare bottom (BB). Got rid of the sand in the 150g reef and will never look back. Only took 23 years of saltwater in my blood before I got wise.

 

[dkeller_nc]

I think the question is a bit more nuanced than "Sand, Good or Bad". There's a lot of different types of sand beds, and there's also the factor of where the sand bed is (display tank, refugia, or both).

I set up and maintained 4 reef tanks in the early to mid 1990's that were classic "berlin" systems - barebottom, massive skimmers, and metal halide/VHO lighting. Some corals did quite well despite not having anything appropriate to feed them as we do now, to the point where I had to frag them before the word was invented to keep them from overgrowing the tank. Yet, elevated nitrates and/or phosphates were problematic - I was constantly fighting algae.

I was incredibly happy to learn about sand beds and carbon dosing after the perspective of having to do frequent large water changes to keep nitrates down with the reefs in the 90's. Now, I almost don't have to think about nitrates, and all it takes is a 2" sand bed and a little sugar/vinegar a couple of times a week.

So I can definitely see the benefit of sand beds.

That said, I have friends that chose large-sized crushed aragonite (Carib-Sea "special" reef sand) for their sand beds because of intense flow from powerheads causing a mess with really fine sand. And they have lots of problems with food getting down into the top 1" of the sand to the point where they have to vacuum it several times a month. Definitely not ideal.

So the solution I'm pursuing with my current build is to use Fiji Pink of about 2" in the DT (Fiji Pink is a mid-sized sand between sugar-fine and special grade) and sugar-fine of about 4" deep in an auxillary refugia tank that will have intense lighting and clams. Because the clams don't need intense flow, and the there's no reason to directly add food to this tank, I at least have the theory that I can provide moderate flow and still use a very fine sand that will prevent food from the main tank from settling into the top 1".

 

[codyreed29]

Well I added about 2 lbs to some about 3 lbs of liverock then put another 3 lbs where to flow was not so high looks pretty good mix sand and tiny bits of rock and then about a sqaure foot of lagoon sand. I'll take a picture and show it.

 

[Reefin' Dude]

depends on the biotope one is trying to emulate. oligotrophic, sand bad. more eutrophic, sand not so bad. calcium carbonate is a fantastic inorganic phosphate binder, but needs to be treated as such or it will become problematic.

G~