To Egg Crate or not?
 

I'm at a stage in my tank build .. and yes I am new to this so looking for some advice from this community. Should i put eggcrate on the bottomm of my tank before adding in sand and my dry rocks?
thanks all,
Steve'o

Some folks do, but FWIW I've never bothered. I sit the rocks on the glass first, then add the sand after. If you put the rocks on the sand then they'll shift around over time.

also you need some slow water flow through the substrate. with an eggcrate you will restrict that flow and potentially stagnent the sand bed especially if you have more the 4"of sand (will also depend on particle size).

So rocks 1st, then sand 2nd is a good advice.

+1 on the put the rock down first and then the sand.

As far as egg crate goes I looked over the information before starting my tank build and decided to do no egg crate. I did this because I want all the good little critters in the sand that stir the sand and eat algae, debries to be able to move through the sand. If your sand has egg crate in it parts of your sand will just become traps for all the bad stuff that builds up in sand.

On a side note everyone has heard of rock cracking the bottom panel of glass hence the reason to use egg crate but, I dont know anyone that has ever had this happen to them.

Yeah, lots of myths in this hobby! I had a Mantis that should have busted out of the glass and killed us in our sleep, yet no one I've talked to has ever seen it break glass. So don't believe everything you hear, putting eggcrate on the bottom is just going to mean one more place for detritus to hang up and increase the nutrients in your tank, and it's not like it's something that's easy to remove once your tank is set up

on the old tank when I had a DSB I made boxes out of eggcrate only so I was burying the bottom 4-5" of rock in the sand. If I had say 1" of sand doubt I would have bothered.

My current tank is BB and rock is sitting direct on the glass

I did put a full sheet of egg crate underneet my liverock and it is fine as long as you wish to keep the sand. If you ever want to remove the sand, then you'll have to rove the egg crate and all the liverock to do so...no fun.

In my case it really helped to anchor my liverock and it would not be as stable if I had not put this. It does protect my bottom glass too.

When a local friend of mine first aquascaped his tank he accidentally dropped a rock from a short height and chipped the bottom glass. I believe that if there was egg crate in place (or a sheet of acrylic if you don't like egg crate) it would have better dispersed the impact and prevented the chip/crack. To be on the safe side he siliconed a piece of glass over the damaged area and so far there have been no issues in the 6 years that the tank has been running.

I personally don't have any in mine but the next time I have to empty it out to move it I will put of a sheet of acrylic in place. My eel occasionally likes to knock things over so it will help me sleep better at night.

I used a sheet of acrylic that was about 1/2" smaller that the bottom of the tank, & then attached several 1"-1 1/2" H piers cut from 2" acrylic tubing to the acrylic to ensure stability of the base rocks against burrowers, flow or any accidental rock slides or falls. It has worked awesome, & so has having a sandbed looked IMO.

I like eggcrate bottom, just one thing that helps me sleep better at night. Its a crack that you will never see if you have a sandbed. That being said I have never heard of a bottom pane cracking either.