Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

I just saw a picture of your tank in your sale thread and was just thinking of how amazing it looks! Don't do it!

BB looks so unnatural and often times kind of sterile. I think most people try to recreate what might be found in the ocean and on all my dives so far, I have yet to find any glass bottoms :lol: I guess most reefs are not all that natural looking because we tend to choose a wide variety of corals from many different areas but going BB is just taking it to another level of unnatural.

I would say in your case, your tank is so nice and working so well, why change anything?

Don't take this the wrong way but it won't look anything like it does now if you remove that nice white sand. :biggrin:

^ the purple tang in my last picture is for sale btw :)

Borderjumper, WOW

Here's one taken on the Jan 23rd. Shows the sand a bit.
http://excalibur.bc.ca/aquarium/Tank...%2001%2023.jpg

Tank size is 180G 6' x 2' x 2'

For flow I have a Dart (3600 GPH) closed loop split 4 ways, and a Dart return (about 2400 GPH with head loss) split to 2 Wavy Seas.

Hoping to add a Maxjet Mod on a Wavy Sea on the back wall (where the frag rack is), likely rotating 10 or 15 degrees each side of pointing straight forward.

I going to have to find the original propelor that came with the mod kit I bought from Chin Lee. I had switched it to a lower flow prop because the original flow could stir up the sand at the oposite end of my tank. That's a problem that''ll be fixed tonight :wink:

The sand can always go back in if I don't like it. Been wanting to do the Zoa bottom thing for a loooong time.

Damn, now I have to add Rics too!

Well its all personal preference in the end. I just think the tank looks so clean and sleek that adding a bunch of zoas on the bottom will really mess with the balance and create a clutter but that's just me :wink:

There is a gorgeous 1000G tank on RC (everyone probably knows which one I mean) and the corals, aquascaping is AMAZING but then there are these clusters on clams and lps all lined up on the bottom and it just kills the over all look. He has pictures from before littering his sand with corals/clams and the tank looks a million times better.

Amazing tank regardless. Yours and his :)

EDIT: I assume you know Denis based on your coral collection :D

The glass is only visible for a short time until Coraline algae covers it, eventually it just looks like bare rock only flat.

Ya, I was looking at your tank for a while before I said "hey you've got a bare bottom". It's not that noticeable really.

OK guys. What do these acronyms mean?

ULNS
Starboard
FTS

Nice looking tank, Reefer Rob. But I notice there is no coraline algae on the side & back panels. Is that because you constantly scrape them away or they just don't grow that much for you?

ULTRA LOW NUTRIENT SYSTEM
STARBOARD ---> kind of plastic that can be placed on bottom of tank
FTS ---> Full Tank Shot

I scrape... but not constantly. As soon as I see specks of Coraline I scrape, otherwise the job is unbearable!

Is the tank in wall? I ask because of the 3 sides being blue.

It is in a stand, the sides are covered.

I forgot to mention one of my other reasons for going bare bottom. I have an Orange Shoulder Tang that likes to eat sand, then poop it out all over my corals and rock work. Every day I have to blow it off my Caps. This'll fix him!

1/3rd done... what a job!

I am pretty sure I am going to a bare bottom tank any advice as I am setting in up in the next little while

Went BB with my 210g reef at first. After 6 months, wife & I decided we hated the look so added 100 lbs of sand & voila, loved it.

If you go BB, then you can always add sand later without negative consequences if done properly.

Anthony

Well, after re aquascaping my tank yesterday, pretty much bare bottom. Have a tiny bit of sand. Just enough to cover most of the bottom, but it's being blown around to show bare glass in area's. I think I like it :D
I'll try for a FTS today

Do I get a sneak preview first, just to give my approval of course!

You likely won't go back! The glass will encrust with Coraline, you can crank up the flow big time, you overall nutrients will be less, your Corals will be happy!

LOL, Leah, maybe :D

Ian, ya that's what I am hoping for, lower nutrients. What was trapped in my sand, after 6 months was appalling. AND stinky!!!!! Now, I have a delema of what to do with 15g of sand in a Brute garbage can, that I can't move LOL

Mix the sand into your compost or into your garden, will work wonders for your plants considering how much nutrient gets saturated.

When I removed my deep sand bed and went shallow I began turning that excess sand into frag disks. I've made around 80 large ones and over 200 little ones so far... and I still have a lot of extra sand. Obviously you'll want to rinse the sand as well as you can first.

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=59760

It's definitely some kind of ugly when the sand first comes out. Still trying to get used to the look of it, but I'm sure it'll look better when the coraline starts. Super cool how I can direct flow anywhere I like now. For that reason alone I think I'd find it difficult to put the sand back in.

I'm having a lot of trouble getting the last bit of sand out from between the rocks, and the sand has caked along where the rock meets the glass so it has to be chipped out. So for the next little while it looks like I'll be blasting with a power head and siphoning :cry:

You will likely have to do this on a regular basis anyway as the debris will tend to collect in a certain area of the tank with the flow.

I know the typical mantra is that BB allows you to push more flow through your tank and that's certainly true - you can without the risk of sand blowing around.

With that said, I've recently reduced the flow in my BB 24 x 24 tank and noticed a significant improvement in growth rate. Previously I was running around 75X my tank volume in flow and now I'm down to around 55X. I may be in a unique situation given how small my tank is and the fact that most of my corals are mini colonies and not large colonies yet. The smaller corals probably aren't impeding flow as much as would occur in other tanks or with larger colonies. But just because you can get away with running more flow in a BB tank doesn't mean it's the best decision.

I have a few theories on why reducing the flow has helped my tank. The primary one being that the lack of sand and my open rockwork minimizes the scrubbing of flow velocity that occurs in tanks with sand where the sand scrubs some of the velocity of the flow. Of course it may also have something to do with slower flow allowing the coral polyps more time to capture some food.

Interesting you're getting better growth with less flow. I was under the impression you can't have too much flow in an SPS tank, unless a nozzle is pointing directly at a coral. I know corals will alter their growth form, growing shorter and heavier in a very turbulent environment. My Yellow Slimer was doing this until I switched to a flare nozzle on my Wavy Seas.

Definitely better flow around the rocks at the base without the sand. With the sand covering it I'd forgotten how open my rock work is at the bottom. Not sure how much the texture of the sand itself impedes flow.