new 20g and can't decide
 

I can't decide if I want to go BB or not. Need advice please.
Thank you

Two Words......Bare Bottom. I'd put some starboard on the bottom but thats still BB.

Chris

Sand isn't required but it looks so damn good. :mrgreen:

Once you go BB you'll never go back

bb is better......sand just looks nicer

What is "starboard"?

It's just a brand name but the actual product is ordinary kitchen cutting board.

Kinda like "Starfire" it's just a brand name of low iron glass.

Hobby lingo I guess. :mrgreen:

And what is the purpose of putting that on the tank bottom?

Thanx,

Well, for saftey. It keeps your rocks from forming pressure points on the glass and also protects the bottom from rock avalanches. You can get it in white and those silly BB folk seem to think it looks like sand. :wink: :mrgreen:

Okay. Thanx. I'm a sand type myself. (I like how sand looks like sand :lol: ). Just curious, though. First year new to reefkeeping and wanting to learn. That's why the silly questions, :rolleyes: .
Thanx again,

It all depends on the fish and other inhabitants. I went bb with the 45g for a bit, and added firefish, found out they like to lay their eggs in rubble, ie larger substrate. I can deal with the required maintenance.

Our 37g, 67g and 120g are all BB with no starboard. Wouldn't go back to a sandbed if you paid me. If you use starboard, you will have to seal the edges of the starboard so detritus doesn't get under it. Otherwise, you are defeating the purpose of going BB.

Without a sand bed, do you still get the shimmering effect from the MH lights? THe foam under my tank is grey and will absorb the light, has anyone tried putting aluminum foil between the foam under the tank and the tank to reflect the light back up?, or would that be too intense? Thanks for all the input :smile:

ya know what's sad? i went and saw someones tank one time and he had the white starboard in there (only i didn't know anything about it at the time), and i was looking at his tank, and like a total blonde (even though they are just highlights) i asked him, "Wow, how do you keep your sand so flat?!"
yah... classic eva.

classic...

Thank you

Hop on the BB bandwagon my friend! I think that BB bottom tanks look better then sand beds, maybe not at first but after the sandbed fills with garbage definitely. Also, I wouldn't bother putting starboard plastic on the tank bottom, maybe it would make aquascaping easier (less slipery) and protect the bottom from that 20LB piece of live rock you have teetering at the top of your rock pile, but I think it looks cheesy :lol:


Yeah you still get the shimmer, the foam under my tank is black and there is a shimmer.

*edited the quotes for easier reading!

I get the shimmer from the MH in my 37g. Black tank stand under the glass.

I'm with the "go with sand" club. Corallin algae looks scabby after a while, when it gets thick and starts to peel.

Could you go BB at the start until you get everything under control. Algea for example would be alot easier to clean if you didnt have sand. THen when it is all stabalized could you add sand without algea coming back?? Even if you added it slowly.

What kind of algae are you talking about?

The whole point of a BB system is that there is no sand for detritus to get caught in. So, in short, adding sand into your system afterwards would defeat the purpose of a BB. Unless of course, you add it in after you decide that you definately do not like the look of a BB system, or you've decided to keep sand dwelling organisms.

As for the main topic... I'd say it depends on what you want to keep. Obviously, if you want to keep sand dwellers you'd want to have a sandbed. However, IMHO, if you do not plan on keeping sand dwellers, I would just go with a BB system. Advantages include easier cleaning of the tank, the possibility to have a high turnover rate in your tank, etc. My 30g half cube is a BB tank, and I love it. I have a nice turnover rate of about 70-80x (mag9 return, 1xseio 620, 1xseio 820, 1xMJ1200) and I don't have to worry about kicking up a sandstorm, plus the flow is more evenly distributed around the tank... rather than concentrated in the top portion of the tank, so I don't have to worry about blowing the crap out of my corals. The fish also seem to enjoy the high rate of flow as well. A lot of the detritus that is produced in my tank gets kicked up and sucked into my skimmer.

-Rich

LOL :lol:

The tank is going to be mainly SPS, so a few snails hermits, ect. Thanks everyone, I'm going BB and loven' it. :biggrin:

Like the algea u get when u first start off. Canyo, turf, brown all that stuff.

As long as your bio-load is low enough, those algae will eventually die off on their own anyway. So there is no need to clean the algae off in the first place.

I get around having all that start up algae, as you call it, by not curing my rock in the display tank. Rather, I cure it in a smaller tank or rubbermaid container with heater, aeration and some NO lighting. During curing, I siphon out the bottom of the container/tank as well as give each rock a good swishing in changewater about once a week. This gets rid of all kinds of algae-producing crud from the rock. It's surprising all the crud that comes out during the following weeks when I siphon the bottom then swish the rock, almost as if it had never been done before :eek:

Once the rock is fully cured, I give it all one more swishing before transferring it to the display tank. After it's aquascaped in the display tank, swishing is not possible, so I turkey baste the rock the day before weekly water changes. Still, lots of crud comes out of the rock, and it is either sucked into mechanical filters or falls to the bottom of the BB tank.

On water change day, powerheads are turned off and the mechanical filters, in our case foams, are thoroughly cleaned in outgoing changewater. The bottom of the tank is siphoned of obvious crud. Then I baste under the rock structure to move the hidden crud to the back of the tank where it is siphoned out.

IME, if rock is cured in a separate container and swished regularly, the bioload is low in the display tank, and there are enough snails in your cleanup crew, there is almost no nuisance algae at all.

Thank for the tip Beverly :exclaim: Over night I got a major cyno out break in my 10g. Hate that stuff. I is probably my fault :redface: , I was trying to feed my pepperment shrimp, (not easy to do with a turkey baster and small mysis shrimp :evil: )And it got out of control. Need to make a batch of water and give the tank a major cleaning. Anyway, thanks again everyone for the tips and advice.

It is always easier to add sand at a leter date if you dont like the bare bottom, than it is to remove sand once you have it in your tank.

Start bare then give it some time to decide.
My girlfriend hated the idea of bare bottom, then once she saw my bare bottom 10g she instantly changed her mind.

Marty,

Instead of using a turkey baster to target feed your shrimp, use one of those small plastic baster-looking things that comes with Prime dechlorinator. One lfs uses one of these things to feed their tanks, but they look like good target feeders too.

Awesome Beverly :cool: Thank you