To substrate,or not to substrate

[ReefWidowed]

that is the question.....Ok, that's enough hamlet for one morning.


So, all of my soft corals are being evicted from the main reef, and we have just set them up their own little 37gal Oceanic cube. I forgot to take substrate into the equation, and now I find myself at that turn in the road. The main reef has crushed coral, and he hates it. But i'm thinking that since I probably won't have fish in this tank, that I won't have to worry about the crushed coral being blown around a lot....and since we have a bucket of it left over, it's free...which is also good.


Or I could leave it BB, but I think all of the crap that gathers just from LR and some corals would drive me crazy, not sure yet....but it probably would.

Then there's playsand....there doesn't seem to be any of the mythical reef playsand around this area anymore, and I don't know if regular playsand is worth dumping all of that silica into a clean happy system.

Any ideas would greatly reduce my risk of a mental breakdown.

THANKS!!
Jennifer

 

[Old Crusty]

I am a believer in the aragonite substrate, lots of good animals live in there. Sand looks Cool and all but it seems a large percentage of the reefers end up turning away from it in the long run and returning to bare bottom or aragonite bottom. one thought... maybe use a aragonite floor lightly covered in sand for that look... if a power head gets away then it won't have that much to blow around.. Just a thought....

 

[aninjaatemyshoe]

Bare bottom would really be cool with a tank full of softies. They could grow on the bottom of the tank. You can't get that with a substrate. Just get a number of cleaners and good flow to take care of the detritus that settles. Of course, you will be somewhat limited in what kind of fish you can have (ex. no jawfish, certain wrasses, etc.)