Is bare bottom less maintenance?

[dela]

Seems like I've been working harder lately than I ever have in the past in order to keep my tank looking nice.

I didn't have to do much when I had a dsb, as it was too fine to siphon, but then it always looked dirty on the sides, which the wife hated. So to keep her thinking the tank was a nice addition to our living room, I switched over to crushed coral about a year ago, which needs to be vacuumed constantly in order to look half way decent.

Maybe I'm over feeding, my color temp is too low, who knows.. but I'm reaching my limit on how hard I'm willing to work. Maybe this is normal and I've just been lazy in the past?

Just curious what people think about different tank configurations in terms of maintenance.

[Reef264]

I have a shallow sand bed (sugar sized).I haven't ever siphoned it, since my Diamond Watchman Goby Keeps it pearly white, and super clean, I've heard a few stories now about Crushed coral being a bit more maintainence than a Sandbed, also messing with the water chemistry, but not a while lot.What is the kelvin of the bulbs you are running?

By "keeping the tank looking nice", could you elaborate more on what you mean?

[EpicWin]

4 inch sanded with select sized sand is great. Also u can try black sand. Keeps bed looking black even when dirty

[pledosophy]

I never do anything to my sandbed.

[GPB]

I had Crushed Coral and hated it. It was a dirt trap and caused all kinds of grief. Now I have 1" of sugar sized sand. I stir it up, and siphon out during water changes, whatever sediment is left my 100 micron sock in the sump usually catches after I stir, and it has been staying nice and clean.

I can see how Barebottom would be a maintenance breeze. Gobies would be bored, and wrasses homeless. In other words, I think you pay a price for barebottom convenience in terms of diversity and fauna in your system.

[Ron Reefman]

I think BB should be for fish only or FOWLR. For a healthy reef I think you need a sand bottom and the inverts that live there. But that's just one successful reef keeper's opinion.
BTW, I never clean my sand and it looks good except along the glass which you can hide with any kind of trim on the outside of the tank.

[Mike_Noren]

My experience has always been that it's more work with a bare bottom, but I guess Mileage May Vary(tm).

[elegance coral]

It depends on how the system is set up. If you have strong flow across the bottom of a BB tank, like from a spray bar behind the rocks, that keeps detritus from settling, BB is very easy to maintain. You'll also need an efficient means of removing particulate matter. Filter socks, efficient skimmer, and/or settling tank. If the flow isn't designed well, everything will settle on the bottom where it's visible. Your wife probably won't like looking at fish poo on the bottom of the tank.
What's going on in the tank that makes maintenance such a chore?

[Jandree22]

Originally Posted by Mike_Noren

My experience has always been that it's more work with a bare bottom, but I guess Mileage May Vary(tm).

Could you please elaborate? I was gung-ho on going BB in my upcoming setup but been having second thoughts about maybe just including a SSB.

[dela]

What's going on in the tank that makes maintenance such a chore?

The more I think about it, the more I think I should get rid of the CC and go back to a DSB.

The problem is that I am growing a lot of muck (and I use the term muck to include cyano, dinos, diatoms, and green algae since it can sometimes be hard to tell muck from muck. But 90% of my problem appears to be various flavors of cyano).

My cleaning routine is as follows:

Week 1 - Remove the rockwork and siphon the crushed coral. Brush off any muck off the rocks. Put everything back in it's place. This is easily a 4+ hour effort from start to finish. I'm getting more efficient, but it still, it takes a while.

Week 2 - Clean the "frag tank". This is a 20 gallon rubble rock tank. This means I remove all of the rubble, siphon out the detritus from the tank, and brush off any muck from the rubble / ricordea rocks. I just added two large plant baskets to hold the rubble and keep the rics close to the light. I think this will greatly simplify this effort as I won't have to pick our each piece of rock one at a time, and I'll probably just shake the baskets before I siphon, to get rid of any detritus on the rocks.

Week 3 - Siphon detritus out of the sump. Clean skimmer, do whatever else needs to be done there. Siphon / clean the 20 gallon fuge (deep sand bed onto which a lot of detritus seems to settle). The fuge is kind of a joke right now as my cheato died as a result of a lighting fixture that I took too long to fix. And while the fuge has some ulva, it only seems to grow well for me in the display tank. That was until the foxface discovered it!

If I do this, the corals (and by corals I mean the Green Star Polyps, which seem to be susceptible to smothering) look happy. (Anemones, gorgs, kenya tress, leather, always seem happy. Fish don't seem to care. Xenia frag always looks mad.) But the crushed coral in the DT looks like it's two weeks overdo for another cleaning and the rockwork is starting to show patches of muck again....

Once spring hits, it's going to be hard to keep this up. And if my clowns manage to hatch a batch of eggs, it's going to be really hard.

[username in use]

Ditch the crushed coral, its doing nothing for you at this point.

[Reef264]

Originally Posted by username in use

ditch the crushed coral, its doing nothing for you at this point.

+1!!

[D-Nak]

Originally Posted by dela

The problem is that I am growing a lot of muck (and I use the term muck to include cyano, dinos, diatoms, and green algae since it can sometimes be hard to tell muck from muck. But 90% of my problem appears to be various flavors of cyano).

Sounds like something else it going on here, beyond what sand bed you choose. What are you using for nutrient export?

One of the best purchases I feel that I've made is a phosphate reactor running GFO. When I see algae starting to grow in my tank I know it's time to replace the GFO.

[KafudaFish]

Originally Posted by EpicWin

4 inch sanded with select sized sand is great. Also u can try black sand. Keeps bed looking black even when dirty

I have read threads about black sand and people like it for the reason you stated but once the tank matures the black sand often grays out due to detritus build up etc.



Dela:

Just curious as to why you remove the rocks to clean. That would drive anyone crazy.

[ganjero]

A healthy sand bed is not going to look 100% white as a new one does, I'm not sure what you mean by looking "half way decent".
s bare bottom less maintenance? It should be the same or more, each approach has different chores. You still need to vacuum the bottom of the tank and sump, and/or use sock filters and change them every 2 days or so. Skimming should be wet and aggressive which means cleaning the cup more often.

Either method requires commitment, there is not a magic formula or shortcut in this hobby to accurately say this is better than this.

[GPB]

From personal experience I'm completely sold on the notion that CC is about the worst substrate you can have in a reef tank. It is a nutrient sink! Actually it is a nutrient magnet. Besides, it is so sharp that many sand dwelling critters don't do well. Cukes can't process it, I don't know about Gobies and jawfish but I imagine it isn't good for them either.

[Casey8]

I have a BB tank and I would never go back to sand bed again. It is easy to clean and can use extra flow for corals as much as you want.

[Floowid]

I can't believe you remove all the rockwork every week! Seems like a completely unnecessary and time consuming chore. With adequate flow in your tank, there is no need to remove all the rocks. Plus I have my theories about beneficial anaerobic bacterial colonies being destroyed when moving/removing rocks. This kind of weekly disturbance means your tank has never had an opportunity to settle in and get well established.

And as a matter of personal opinion, a bare bottom tank to me looks like a beautiful home, with nice paint and artwork hung on the walls, great furniture and dazzling lighting, with a unpainted concrete floor.

[Sk8r]

I had medium grade aragonite, re-set up with superfine aragonite when I moved and hated it: it killed corals, being blown about, and never would settle. I pulled it out and went back to medium aragonite DSB, which I love, but had a brief time with a very shallow sandbed: huge PITA, and always dirty. Not enough volume of sand to promote self-cleaning or to support sand cleaners like nassarius and watchman. I'll never do that again. Medium for me.

[dela]

I'll post some details after this.

Sounds like something else it going on here, beyond what sand bed you choose. What are you using for nutrient export?

Lately nothing. Unless you count skimmate and the considerable amount of crap I've been siphoning out.

Just curious as to why you remove the rocks to clean. That would drive anyone crazy.

Since I keep growing cyano on the rocks, I keep having to clean them off manually. Yup, it's a pain. And it's impossible to put the rocks back in the exact same spot each time. So much for stable conditions!

A healthy sand bed is not going to look 100% white as a new one does, I'm not sure what you mean by looking "half way decent".

I'm sure we all have different levels of tolerance for what looks good. For me, "half way decent" = not covered in muck.

I need to post some pictures. I stayed up last night cleaning , so today my tank is as clean as it gets. I'll document how long it takes to grow crud, as well as what form it takes.

[dela]

When I test for nitrate or phospate, everything looks good. Although I admit I quit testing a while ago since I got tired of looking at zeros. (I attributed this to the bio-pellets - and at the time, very low bio-load. It has grown a lot.)

I think there are a combination of factors that are leading to the problem, but I suspect the heart of the problem to be the crushed coral which seems to trap a lot of detritus (and possibly the remnants of the old DSB). Also, the sand that is in the fuge and what is left in the DT under the crushed coral is South Down sand that has been in service for over 10 years.

The tank is a 90 gallon reef ready bow front, which looks awesome, but in hindsight is an impractical shape for a reef tank. If I don't remove the rockwork when I clean, it's impossible to get behind the rocks.

Circulation is ~600 gpm from sump and ~1400 gpm from Hydor Korallia. I'd like to increase the flow within the tank in order to suspend particles and send them to the sump. Unfortunately my H Crispa anemone (which is a very cool anemone) gets ****ed off, deflates, and tries to float around to find a new spot when I turn on the maximod-maxijet which really gets the water going and gets most particles in suspension. And since the anemone likes to attach to the bottom of the tank, it makes it tricky to add flow at the bottom of the tank where it will pick up suspended particles. The bubble tip anemones don't seem to like that much continuous flow either.

The lighting is 4xT5HO. (1) 6,500K lamp, (1)10,000K lamp, and (2) blue actinic lamps. I worry about the 6500K lamp.

I run carbon and GFO in one small phosban reactor. It's probably not enough and I probably don't change it out often enough.

I upgraded to RODI a few months back. Before that it was just RO.

I run a bio-pellet reactor in series with a skimmer. I used to pull 1-2 cups of really dark skimmate per week. Now it seems like I'm lucky if I get one not so dark cup per week. Probably time to recharge the biopellets, which have been running for 9 months.

Also, I've been culturing phytoplankton and copepods. I have lots of excess phyto, so I dump it into the display. I'm going to quit doing this even though I believe all of the corals and anemones look their best the day after I dump 1/2 L of green water into the system. (I still grow muck even when I stop adding green water for a couple of weeks - so I don't think GW is the primary problem if it's even a problem at all). (I wish I had a centrifuge). Soon I'll have rotifers in the hopes of raising some clowns, so extra green water will likely be a luxury anyway. And soon I hope to have enough tigriopus cultures going to start feeding the DT tank regularly, which will cut down on the amount of dead food added to the tank.

I feed the equivalent of one formula 1 selcon soaked cube per per day and the equivalent of four selcon soaked cubes every couple of weeks to the anemones.

[KafudaFish]

Thoughts on a diatomaceous filter?

[dela]

I had medium grade aragonite, re-set up with superfine aragonite when I moved and hated it: it killed corals, being blown about, and never would settle. I pulled it out and went back to medium aragonite DSB, which I love, but had a brief time with a very shallow sandbed: huge PITA, and always dirty. Not enough volume of sand to promote self-cleaning or to support sand cleaners like nassarius and watchman. I'll never do that again. Medium for me.

Just saw a tank the other night from one of the locals. Not sure what the different grades are, but it was a coarse sand and it looked very nice. I wonder if it's the sand you are talking about. Seems like it had the look of crushed coral, but probably more of the filtering capability of the DSB.

What is your maintenance routine to keep it clean?

I can't believe you remove all the rockwork every week!

Not every week, every 3 weeks..

And the rock is connected via PVC, so it's probably not quite as bad as it sounds. The rock section goes from the tank, into a 5g bucket with tank water. So it's not exposed for more than 10 seconds. Once that spot is clean, it goes right back in... Like I said, I'm getting more efficient.

Kind of like moving furniture when you are vacuuming!

[dela]

Here are some pictures.

7475 - On the top left you can see an old picture of my now fully digested red algae that is completely covered in cyano. (My foxface discovered it along with all the other nice algaes I had growing in the tank.) Also, the rock underneath the GSP is prone to growing cyano for some reason.

7668 - If I don't clean off the GSP, it stops expanding.

7708 - The anemone was much bigger when I cleaned, so I missed a spot. Now just imagine all that red cyano all over the crushed coral.

[danderso]

Removing the rock like that will keep that system from ever balancing. I don't have much else to add but I don't think anything will ever work as long as you are doing that.