Anyone have any experience with using no substrate? Total Berlin style... I have seen a few pretty nice reefs without substrate and was thinking of trying this. What is the down side for just using live rock for a reef (skimmer and calc reactor of course)?
You lose the benefits of a dsb. You can largely make up for that by attaching a dsb refugium to the system. I did that on my sps system and it works out very well. Let's me run very high water movement in the main tank without blowing sand everywhere. Allows water to circulate under the live rock structure also.
I have my main tank and several others set up as pure Berlin style, barebottom and live rock with protein skimming. Although I have tanks with substrate, it's just a personal preference that I happen to like the looks of the bare bottom better than substrate. In all these years, I've not found a reason to have to have substrate in these tanks.
Maybe if I could keep a completely white substrate I would be happier, but I have no knack for that.
Sure is easy to clean a bare bottom tank.
