I just got a new (to me) 30g rr tank. I want to get it setup but will most likely have to move it in 6 months. So I was considering going bare bottom to make it easier when the time comes (plus I don't have any sand). What are the advantages/disadvantages? Also what could I put on the bottom, would egg crate work?
Question about going bare bottom
- Thread starter cmantis
- Start date
- Location
- White Plains
I am also going bb on my next build and i am putting tan starboard down so the rock isnt on the glass i dont feel safe with that
If you're going to go bare bottom you wouldn't want anything like eggcrate to catch detritus. If you utilize a large skimmer, high flow display, micro bag in sump, and phosphate media, you will have an extremely efficient means of removing organics from your system. Besides your live rock, phosphate will not have a place to store and accumulate. Looks unnatural though.
think about few months down the line when u have vac all the stuff that sit at the bottom of the tank i did bare bottom for a min and didnt like after a while but that just me plus u cant have certian animal that need a sand bed /wrasse/some snails sand sifting star ect anyway gl with the build eather way by the way cmantis u mush have alot $$$$ huh i c u have a few build going on
- Location
- Howell, NJ
Great advice buddy. Dont forget a ton of flow at the bottom to keep detritus off the bottom...
Ha, not anymore. Just been doing slow man and looking for deals here and there where I can. Definitely isn't a cheap hobby though. Still don't even have a tank fully up and running yet. But soon its on like donkey kong.
The only reason I'm using sand on my next build is because I'm 99% sure I'm keeping a sand-dwelling anemone.
You can use starboard to cover the bottom. It will provide some protection for the glass and looks better IMO. www.cuttingboardcompany.com is great. They will cut your board to the exact dimensions.
You can use starboard to cover the bottom. It will provide some protection for the glass and looks better IMO. www.cuttingboardcompany.com is great. They will cut your board to the exact dimensions.
- Location
- Westchester
+1 on sand gives a reef a true look if your going for your own piece of the ocean. Here's a good article I got from Coral magazine on sand beds.
FEATURE ARTICLES
Important Mything Information about Sand Beds
by Ronald L. Shimek, Ph.D.
Although all aspects of the reef aquarium hobby are subject to the evolution of mything links, the myths that have developed about sand beds specifically need to be addressed. A few of these misleading or wholly inaccurate ideas about sand beds have gems of entertaining stories contained within them; they await only a good videographer and computer graphics artist to go viral. The best is probably the legend of the eruption of the sulfide volcano. It goes something like this.
Joe the Aquarist sets up an aquarium that contains a biotope of a distant South Seas reef, complete with sand bed and a normal fish complement. As a result, it is necessary to heavily feed the tank. Everything goes well for a period ranging from a couple to a few years. I have heard ?factual accounts? (?True!? they swear) stating that two, three, or five years passed before THE problem became evident. Excitingly evident. Our aquarist comes home one evening after a hard day managing the rat race, pours the usual refreshing glass of absinthe, grabs a small dish of psilocybins out of the veggie bin, and sits down to enjoy watching the tank, which for some reason hasn?t been doing as well lately as once was the case. All of a sudden, the sand bed starts to bulge upward, shivers in a sand-bed quake, and a giant, sandy, pustule-like volcano erupts, ejaculating a blackish globule of foul fluid, which surrounds a bubble of?what can only be, it has to be, it IS hydrogen sulfide gas. As this bubble makes its way to the water?s surface it engulfs the (pick one or more: largest, most expensive, or spouse?s favorite) fish, whose eyes immediately glaze over as it goes ?fins up? and dies. And, of course, the cause of all of this disorder and devastation is, and can only be, of course and naturally, the sand bed.
Is it possible to determine what the aquarist actually saw? Probably not. While I normally don?t accuse folks that ask me questions of being fabricators of the truth, there are a number of reasons why this tale is suspect. First, I have heard several almost identical versions of this event, most of them initially making their appearance almost simultaneously during a period of online acrimony several years ago. Then, there is the problem of reality and hydrogen sulfide. Certainly, very small amounts of this material can and frequently are made in reef tanks by the anoxic decomposition of proteinaceous material. But, only very small amounts will be made. It is made where some substrate encloses or seals off some proteinaceous matter, such as excess food, or the corpse of some reef animal, so that no water moves through the sediments surrounding the debris. Hydrogen sulfide is the result of anaerobic bacterial decomposition, and when it is made, it generally stays where it was made, until the substrate is disturbed in some manner.Then often some black sediment or debris is noticed and the foul sulfide odor is apparent. The odor is often referred to as being a ?rotten egg? smell. The number of people these days who actually have smelled a rotting egg is pretty small. It stinks. And profoundly!
Hydrogen sulfide is exceptionally toxic, far more so than most people realize, and natural selection has adapted our olfactory systems to detect it in parts per trillion concentrations. As a result, when we smell the characteristic ?rotten egg? smell of hydrogen sulfide, even at its seemingly unbearable strongest, there still is not enough of the material present to do us any harm. Enough hydrogen sulfide to make an eruptive bubble large enough to engulf a fish, or even a small part of a fish, would be so unbearable to our aquarist that he would literally have to run from the room. And I do mean run. The amount of hydrogen sulfide necessary to cause the stated effects (in other words, an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, very tiny amount of gaseous hydrogen sulfide), when it burst through the film of the air-water interface and was convected across the room to be inhaled by the aquarist, would stimulate the olfactory epithelium so intensely that the respiratory musculature would be paralyzed. The aquarist would have to run from the room to get into ?clean? air. Initially, he wouldn?t or couldn?t smell this pungent gas, as the concentration of the gas would be too high and the specific odor receptors would be overwhelmed. Within a couple of seconds?which would seem much longer?he would be able to breathe as the gas diffused away from the nasal epithelium, and then the smell would hit him. These effects would be so evident, nobody would describe the event without mentioning them.
Second, it would take a relatively immense amount of protein decomposition to produce enough gas to do the deed as described. However, that decomposition does not and cannot occur in isolation. Because of the amount of H2S necessary for the described effects, and the total lack of oxygen necessary for the generation of H2S, so many other things would have had to go wrong in the tank prior to the eruption that the tank would have been in severe and noticeable distress well before the gas erupted. It is likely it would either have had to be cleaned or disposed of; in other words, it could have never gotten that far. But, let?s assume for the moment that it did, and the gas was formed as a bubble, contained somehow in the sediments. When the bubble was somehow released, and it started to rise through the sediments and then into the water overlying the sediments, the H2S would be destroyed and converted into sulfate ions. Any mixture of oxygen and hydrogen sulfide is amazingly reactive. By the time our infamous bubble had risen even a short distance through the water, most of the sulfide would be gone, replaced by sulfate. If the gas encountered a fish, the mucous layer over the fish?s skin would protect it for a long enough period that all the sulfide would be destroyed.
What could have happened, if a sand bed failed so badly as to cause such an excessive accumulation of hydrogen sulfide? The only way this could happen would be by intense and excessive overfeeding, coupled with the death or removal of all of the sediment infauna. In natural situations, such a pattern of organic enrichment may occur in areas such as sea grass beds where the buildup of decomposing vegetation will be the cause. Often the plants living in such areas have tubes in their tissues to allow the movement of atmospheric oxygen down to their roots, so that they can survive, but not much other than bacteria lives in the sediments. Similar concentrations of organic material also occur in highly polluted areas, such as near pulp-mill effluent discharges. In one such area I was consulted about, the sediment looked, and felt, like black mayonnaise, and to say it took your breath away was an understatement. In any case, alteration of the normal color and consistency of the aquarium sediments would give these changes away long before any problem could occur. Additionally, as long as oxygenated water was moving across the sediment surface the tank?s inhabitants would be safe. Hydrogen sulfide and oxygen together form an extremely reactive combination, and the sulfide in the presence of oxygen would be almost instantaneously oxidized to sulfate ion, which is non-toxic. As long as oxygenated water moves across the sediment-water interface, no sulfide ion can exist in the tank?s water. A similar situation occurs in most natural ponds in the temperate regions; the sediments in the pond immediately below the sediment-water interface is anoxic and full of sulfides, but fish live just fine millimeters above the interface because no sulfide crosses the barrier. Only if all water movement over the sediments?surface was stopped and the water itself was anoxic could sulfide ion persist in the tank?s water.
In other words, none of the events in the described scenario (= myth) can occur in an aquarium.
A second myth-take that is made is to say that sand beds cause something called ?old-tank? syndrome. Supposedly, this is as low and progressive cessation of the sand bed?s functionality with time, so that after about six or seven years, the bed is functioning as a ?filter? at a much lower efficiency than it once did. Unlike hydrogen sulfide volcanism, this scenario has a hint of reality to it. The bad news is that sand beds can accumulate some materials over time, and those materials may impact the functionality of the sand bed. The good news is that this accumulation is uncommon and almost completely preventable. The detrimental materials that the beds can accumulate are toxins that enter the tank in very low concentrations and get bound into organic compounds and sequestered or precipitated into the sand bed. Problems can occur only if the material redissolves, and this is normally very unlikely. The primary materials that cause trouble are metals, especially the toxic heavy metals that are often called ?trace elements.? These toxic materials are often added byaquarists in excessive amounts as additives for no good reason, as in most cases they become poisons in concentrations above those in natural sea water. In addition, most organisms get all the ?trace elements? they can use from well-formulated foods. Fortunately, most organisms can deal with a bit of overdosing by binding the metal into large protein-metal complexes called metallothioneins. Such complexes are insoluble, and thus render these dangerous chemicals harmless. Additionally, in the deeper parts of sand beds where the dissolved oxygen concentration is very low, the pH will tend to rise, and that can cause these metals to bind with sulfide ions, which are present in very low concentrations. These metal sulfides are largely insoluble, as long as the pH is basic (= greater than 7).
Can the buildup of these toxic materials occur in a reef tank? Certainly, but it takes long and diligent work on the part oftheaquarist to foul things up that badly. First, one must almost literally pour in the additives containing the various toxic heavy metals. Generally, aquarium supplement manufacturers recognize that such materials are potentially toxic, and not wanting to kill the geese that shovel in the dollars, they tend to keep the amount of these materials in supplements at quite low levels. In most cases, actually more of these materials probably enter reef tanks in foods than in additives, and after they get excreted by animals and dissolve in the water they get bound directly into the algae that need them for growth. Fortunately, algae are often exported from reef tanks, keeping the level of trace metals low. Even so, however, some nutrients always make it to the sand bed, and if the sand bed?s infaunal organisms are ignored, allowed to perish, and are not replaced, excessive nutrients can be deposited in the sand bed, and the metals in them can build up to fairly high levels. Normally, with reasonable care and regular maintenance, this doesn?t occur, but it is a possibility.
FEATURE ARTICLES
Important Mything Information about Sand Beds
by Ronald L. Shimek, Ph.D.
Although all aspects of the reef aquarium hobby are subject to the evolution of mything links, the myths that have developed about sand beds specifically need to be addressed. A few of these misleading or wholly inaccurate ideas about sand beds have gems of entertaining stories contained within them; they await only a good videographer and computer graphics artist to go viral. The best is probably the legend of the eruption of the sulfide volcano. It goes something like this.
Joe the Aquarist sets up an aquarium that contains a biotope of a distant South Seas reef, complete with sand bed and a normal fish complement. As a result, it is necessary to heavily feed the tank. Everything goes well for a period ranging from a couple to a few years. I have heard ?factual accounts? (?True!? they swear) stating that two, three, or five years passed before THE problem became evident. Excitingly evident. Our aquarist comes home one evening after a hard day managing the rat race, pours the usual refreshing glass of absinthe, grabs a small dish of psilocybins out of the veggie bin, and sits down to enjoy watching the tank, which for some reason hasn?t been doing as well lately as once was the case. All of a sudden, the sand bed starts to bulge upward, shivers in a sand-bed quake, and a giant, sandy, pustule-like volcano erupts, ejaculating a blackish globule of foul fluid, which surrounds a bubble of?what can only be, it has to be, it IS hydrogen sulfide gas. As this bubble makes its way to the water?s surface it engulfs the (pick one or more: largest, most expensive, or spouse?s favorite) fish, whose eyes immediately glaze over as it goes ?fins up? and dies. And, of course, the cause of all of this disorder and devastation is, and can only be, of course and naturally, the sand bed.
Is it possible to determine what the aquarist actually saw? Probably not. While I normally don?t accuse folks that ask me questions of being fabricators of the truth, there are a number of reasons why this tale is suspect. First, I have heard several almost identical versions of this event, most of them initially making their appearance almost simultaneously during a period of online acrimony several years ago. Then, there is the problem of reality and hydrogen sulfide. Certainly, very small amounts of this material can and frequently are made in reef tanks by the anoxic decomposition of proteinaceous material. But, only very small amounts will be made. It is made where some substrate encloses or seals off some proteinaceous matter, such as excess food, or the corpse of some reef animal, so that no water moves through the sediments surrounding the debris. Hydrogen sulfide is the result of anaerobic bacterial decomposition, and when it is made, it generally stays where it was made, until the substrate is disturbed in some manner.Then often some black sediment or debris is noticed and the foul sulfide odor is apparent. The odor is often referred to as being a ?rotten egg? smell. The number of people these days who actually have smelled a rotting egg is pretty small. It stinks. And profoundly!
Hydrogen sulfide is exceptionally toxic, far more so than most people realize, and natural selection has adapted our olfactory systems to detect it in parts per trillion concentrations. As a result, when we smell the characteristic ?rotten egg? smell of hydrogen sulfide, even at its seemingly unbearable strongest, there still is not enough of the material present to do us any harm. Enough hydrogen sulfide to make an eruptive bubble large enough to engulf a fish, or even a small part of a fish, would be so unbearable to our aquarist that he would literally have to run from the room. And I do mean run. The amount of hydrogen sulfide necessary to cause the stated effects (in other words, an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, very tiny amount of gaseous hydrogen sulfide), when it burst through the film of the air-water interface and was convected across the room to be inhaled by the aquarist, would stimulate the olfactory epithelium so intensely that the respiratory musculature would be paralyzed. The aquarist would have to run from the room to get into ?clean? air. Initially, he wouldn?t or couldn?t smell this pungent gas, as the concentration of the gas would be too high and the specific odor receptors would be overwhelmed. Within a couple of seconds?which would seem much longer?he would be able to breathe as the gas diffused away from the nasal epithelium, and then the smell would hit him. These effects would be so evident, nobody would describe the event without mentioning them.
Second, it would take a relatively immense amount of protein decomposition to produce enough gas to do the deed as described. However, that decomposition does not and cannot occur in isolation. Because of the amount of H2S necessary for the described effects, and the total lack of oxygen necessary for the generation of H2S, so many other things would have had to go wrong in the tank prior to the eruption that the tank would have been in severe and noticeable distress well before the gas erupted. It is likely it would either have had to be cleaned or disposed of; in other words, it could have never gotten that far. But, let?s assume for the moment that it did, and the gas was formed as a bubble, contained somehow in the sediments. When the bubble was somehow released, and it started to rise through the sediments and then into the water overlying the sediments, the H2S would be destroyed and converted into sulfate ions. Any mixture of oxygen and hydrogen sulfide is amazingly reactive. By the time our infamous bubble had risen even a short distance through the water, most of the sulfide would be gone, replaced by sulfate. If the gas encountered a fish, the mucous layer over the fish?s skin would protect it for a long enough period that all the sulfide would be destroyed.
What could have happened, if a sand bed failed so badly as to cause such an excessive accumulation of hydrogen sulfide? The only way this could happen would be by intense and excessive overfeeding, coupled with the death or removal of all of the sediment infauna. In natural situations, such a pattern of organic enrichment may occur in areas such as sea grass beds where the buildup of decomposing vegetation will be the cause. Often the plants living in such areas have tubes in their tissues to allow the movement of atmospheric oxygen down to their roots, so that they can survive, but not much other than bacteria lives in the sediments. Similar concentrations of organic material also occur in highly polluted areas, such as near pulp-mill effluent discharges. In one such area I was consulted about, the sediment looked, and felt, like black mayonnaise, and to say it took your breath away was an understatement. In any case, alteration of the normal color and consistency of the aquarium sediments would give these changes away long before any problem could occur. Additionally, as long as oxygenated water was moving across the sediment surface the tank?s inhabitants would be safe. Hydrogen sulfide and oxygen together form an extremely reactive combination, and the sulfide in the presence of oxygen would be almost instantaneously oxidized to sulfate ion, which is non-toxic. As long as oxygenated water moves across the sediment-water interface, no sulfide ion can exist in the tank?s water. A similar situation occurs in most natural ponds in the temperate regions; the sediments in the pond immediately below the sediment-water interface is anoxic and full of sulfides, but fish live just fine millimeters above the interface because no sulfide crosses the barrier. Only if all water movement over the sediments?surface was stopped and the water itself was anoxic could sulfide ion persist in the tank?s water.
In other words, none of the events in the described scenario (= myth) can occur in an aquarium.
A second myth-take that is made is to say that sand beds cause something called ?old-tank? syndrome. Supposedly, this is as low and progressive cessation of the sand bed?s functionality with time, so that after about six or seven years, the bed is functioning as a ?filter? at a much lower efficiency than it once did. Unlike hydrogen sulfide volcanism, this scenario has a hint of reality to it. The bad news is that sand beds can accumulate some materials over time, and those materials may impact the functionality of the sand bed. The good news is that this accumulation is uncommon and almost completely preventable. The detrimental materials that the beds can accumulate are toxins that enter the tank in very low concentrations and get bound into organic compounds and sequestered or precipitated into the sand bed. Problems can occur only if the material redissolves, and this is normally very unlikely. The primary materials that cause trouble are metals, especially the toxic heavy metals that are often called ?trace elements.? These toxic materials are often added byaquarists in excessive amounts as additives for no good reason, as in most cases they become poisons in concentrations above those in natural sea water. In addition, most organisms get all the ?trace elements? they can use from well-formulated foods. Fortunately, most organisms can deal with a bit of overdosing by binding the metal into large protein-metal complexes called metallothioneins. Such complexes are insoluble, and thus render these dangerous chemicals harmless. Additionally, in the deeper parts of sand beds where the dissolved oxygen concentration is very low, the pH will tend to rise, and that can cause these metals to bind with sulfide ions, which are present in very low concentrations. These metal sulfides are largely insoluble, as long as the pH is basic (= greater than 7).
Can the buildup of these toxic materials occur in a reef tank? Certainly, but it takes long and diligent work on the part oftheaquarist to foul things up that badly. First, one must almost literally pour in the additives containing the various toxic heavy metals. Generally, aquarium supplement manufacturers recognize that such materials are potentially toxic, and not wanting to kill the geese that shovel in the dollars, they tend to keep the amount of these materials in supplements at quite low levels. In most cases, actually more of these materials probably enter reef tanks in foods than in additives, and after they get excreted by animals and dissolve in the water they get bound directly into the algae that need them for growth. Fortunately, algae are often exported from reef tanks, keeping the level of trace metals low. Even so, however, some nutrients always make it to the sand bed, and if the sand bed?s infaunal organisms are ignored, allowed to perish, and are not replaced, excessive nutrients can be deposited in the sand bed, and the metals in them can build up to fairly high levels. Normally, with reasonable care and regular maintenance, this doesn?t occur, but it is a possibility.
- Location
- Clifton, NJ
I went barebottom to avoid scratching my acrylic tank.. I got scratches anyway and I regret going barebottom...just doesn't look right and there is so much lifeform that establishes in the sand bed that you miss out on when you go bare. IMO
- Location
- Westchester
Lmao thanks dubs, just a good article I found on Coral magazine. I love learning and reading about this hobby specially from people who know their stuff.
I find bare bottom easier to maintain. I siphon out the crap that builds up in one part of my tank, run enough flow that everything else gets sucked into my over flow, and down to the sump into my sock. I also have an acrylic tank and worry about scratches so no sand for me, so far so good. I do miss sand sometimes just to be able to put a frag in the sand and not have to mount it, but my water is always crystal clear, and I dont have to worry about "disturbing the sand bed".
My 155 mixed reef has always had sand beds: 1st. Sb was the HD Good Old Castle Southdown (loved this sand to bad it is not found anymore), 2nd. SB was ESV (hated it), 3rd., and current is the CoralSea Seaflor Reef Grade Araganite sand (like it).
My 20gl. is BB, don't like it all that much. I painted the bottom pane black to avoid light coming up from underneath. Sump has light on reverse lighting schedule. Even with a PH at the bottom detrius still collects, and has to be vacuumed periodically.
My 20gl. is BB, don't like it all that much. I painted the bottom pane black to avoid light coming up from underneath. Sump has light on reverse lighting schedule. Even with a PH at the bottom detrius still collects, and has to be vacuumed periodically.
Dr Ron is a huge (almost fanatical, IMO) proponent of a DSB (deep sand bed). As long as you read the above article with that in mind, I think it has some good points.
The whole "natural" vs "unnatural" debate to me is absolutely silly. There are so many examples of unnatural things we do regarding aquariums... Keeping an Achilles tang in anything but a pool with surge flow and tens of thousands of gallons of water is unnatural. Does anyone have a 240 gallon tank filled with one, single damsel in it? That's about an accurate representation of the ocean.
What about zeovit, or the intense, almost radioactive look of corals and fish under royal blue LEDs (or actinic VHOs for that matter)?
How about mixing corals and fish from different parts of the ocean? Or mixing fish that would never see each other in the wild. Keeping a convict tang or a few cardinals, when they almost exclusively form schools in the ocean. Unnatural ?
It's all a matter of personal opinion. No matter which method you're using, know what it DOES and what it DOES NOT do. Accurately. Be willing to do the correct maintenance for each method. Try not to listen to the fanatics on either side.
"It's a matter of personal opinion" Exactly...
Having kept many tanks with sandbeds (Deep and otherwise) and tanks with barebottom , I like the look of the sand on the bottom. I have come to the conclusion that 1 -2 inches of sand on the bottom works best for me as I can clean it with a gravel cleaner when I do a water change and just leave the crabs to clean up what I miss and the only algae I have is coraline.
Having kept many tanks with sandbeds (Deep and otherwise) and tanks with barebottom , I like the look of the sand on the bottom. I have come to the conclusion that 1 -2 inches of sand on the bottom works best for me as I can clean it with a gravel cleaner when I do a water change and just leave the crabs to clean up what I miss and the only algae I have is coraline.
- Location
- Deer Park,Long Island,11729
Ummmm I like my BB 
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