Thinking of going BB. Need guidance please!
 

It just kind of hit me this morning.. looking at BB tanks and hearing why people do it. It really makes a lot of sense...

I was just wanting to take a stab at the steps in going BB.. I think it would be good for many reasons, obviously for the sake of not having a bed of gunk basically build up on me...

My questions as of NOW (I am sure there will be plenty more)


Is there a way to remove the sand without actually tearing apart the tank?
IF I go BB, do I have to lay down starboard, or can I just leave it BB with the glass?
If I remove the sand I have now (which is a very, very shallow bed.. maybe 1-2") Will my tank go through any kind of spike? (taking into consideration I would be using the siphon method if possible)

That's it for now... seems like I would probably have much less nutrients in the tank by removing the sand. I figure my SPS might like this, and that perhaps nitrates and phosphates are somewhat reduced... plus, I don't mind the look of BB.

Thanks .
Scott

Not sure how well a YWG will do without a sandbed.
Something to consider.

Ahhh, Ryan.. thank you! That definitely did not yet cross my mind.

Bummer. Does anyone happen to know how well a YWG will do without a sand bed?

you should be able to vacume the gravel out then stain the water back thru a micron bag to clean the sedimant out.

One thing to watch is if your rock is sitting on the sand. Removing the sand may topple your rock work. To avoid any disruption in filtration, remove a little bit of sand with each water change until it's all gone.

Well i can actually see a difference in my tank. Before convertign overto a FOWLR. the reef that i had in my 62 gal tank. I was always cleaning the glass every day. So when came the time to clean out the DSb. I actually couldnt wait.

Now with my FOWLR i have the flow turned right up and man the bottom stays clean the glass is never dirty and the tank looks great. With this i might be adding a few clams to my wsump and have some MH lights over the sump to help with the nitrates.

But i will see once I start getting them i guess .

After going BB I cannot say how much I love it. So clean, no headaches. And I do it WITHOUT a skimmer. Which apparently is pretty hard they say? But I have no issues. My rocks shed quite a bit still. So you need to siphon the ditrius alot. Otherwise, its been rock solid steady. No algae blooms, no cyano. Its been a dream to run. I may make a small dam, 3 - 4 inches wide from the front so I can put a sandbed in for sand loving fish, but thats about it.. if I do it, I will be cleaning the sand every water change for sure.

Thanks for the comments guys.

Willow: Do you mean vacuum it out then put a micron bag inside the tank to collect floating junk?

Reef_Raf: Thanks for the advice.. I'll make sure to watch the rocks. Last thing I need is my rockwork toppling down.

Asmodeus: Glad to hear your enjoying the BB experience. I hope mine goes well.. if I decide to go through with it of course.

Chad: Glad to hear your enjoying your BB experience as well :D I will be runing a skimmer if I go BB.. I think my SPS will do better this way.


I am still wondering if a Yellow Watchman can live in a tank without a sandbed :confused: I really hope so, as this is something I would like to try. Anyone have any input?

siphon
 

use a rigid tube connected to flex tube to do your water changes. while siphoning, suck out the sand. after a number of water changes, you should start to see some glass depending on the thickness of your sandbed.
I am not posting to argue either way but i would recommend bb and thats what i'm in the process of doing with my tank. IMO sand just hides the crap we don't want to see nor do we want to believe exists in our tanks.

BTW- brads advice is good because i found my rocks have been shifting as i vacuum more and more sand with each water change.

i don't really see the need to put starboard on the bottom although i would consider a layer of acrylic. Also consider the faux pas sand bed as noted on this tread in RC with various options
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=392144

This has been my point of view on sand now. And after a quick turkey basting on my sand bed yesterday, and seeing the clouds of ..... crap coming up just made me think of whats being trapped down there.

At the same time, I feel bad taking out the sand... I'll be killing off a lot of slugs and worms this way.

Lastly Chin, your link did not work for me, and I am a bit slow.. I don't understand your siphon method. Either way, I am sure I can put two and two together and figure it out ! Thanks a lot.

Last question still remains... can a YWG live and thrive without a sandbed? :neutral:

I agree, a skimmer is important. However, I have not had time to install my sump and my big becket skimmer yet. I may just get a AquaC or something in the meantime.

No idea on the YWG. But I would say it would put some stress on him at the very least. I had a Checkerboard Wrasse that buries himself in the sand at night etc. Well when I went BB he was burying himself into a ball of Cheato I had in the main tank. It was a sad sight. I no longer have him because of the lack of sandbed. :(

That's too bad about your wrasse Chad. I don't want to put any stress on him.. I guess I may need to remove him if I really want to do this. I'll try over at RC and see what they have to say about YWG's and sandbeds.

:wink:

I was forced to remove the sand bed from my sump because I over-kalked and it had solidified! (nothing in the sump to turn over the sand..)

Anyway, I simply vaccuumed the sand out using a rubber hose....(and lifted the solid lumps out by hand!) While you suck out sand, you'll also suck out a lot of nasty stuff. IMO, there is no way that you could return that vaccuumed water to the system.

Just do a little bit at a time. In my case, I would remove 2 gallons of sand/water, then replace with 2 gallons of fresh SW. I did that once per week and it took about 6-8 weeks to remove all the sand.

As usual, the #1 rule is not to do anything too fast!

Thanks untamed.

The thing is , my tank is only 20g. So to empty the sand out, wouldn't take too, too long anyways. And I don't think I'd ever put the old water back in the system, doesnt' seem like a good idea at all.

Thanks again.

We went BB in our three reefs when we upgraded all three tanks almost two years ago. That meant we removed all the livestock from the existing tank, got rid of the sandbed so we could put the new tank/stand in place of the old tank/stand. Had lots of NSW on hand, but used quite a bit of the old water to fill the new tank. Rock from the old tank was swished in old tank water to remove detritus, and there was LOTS of it.

The sandbeds in each of the three tanks was 2-3" deep. Once everything was out of the tank, I stirred the sandbed really well with the remaining 2-3" of tank water. There was a raunchy rotten egg stench to the water after stirring. These were not what I would consider deep sand beds in the least, yet at least some of the bed had gone anoxic and had released hydrogen sulfide.

Because of the possibility of releasing hydrogen sulfide into your water column, I would suggest you take the time to be safe with your livestock if you go BB and tear down your tank to remove the sandbed. That way, you can get a very clean start, have new aquascaping, and be sure you won't have an unintended disaster on your hands.

Here's a new addition to the Reef Chemistry page on Hydrogen Sulfide and the Reef Aquarium:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-12/rhf/index.php


Personally, I won't go back to using sandbeds EVER!

I have even heard from the bigest supporter of DSB, Dr Ron, that the deep sand bed is useless if you do not have a sufficently sized aquarium. I forget the exact size that was suggested, but I believe it was atleast 50+ gal. The reasoning was that anything smaller could not sustain enough life to make the DSB functional. It made sense to me.

So, I went from a 20gal with DSB to the 50gal BB. I cannot begin to tell you the crap that was built up in my 20gal. It was thoroughly disgusting. So if you want to keep a sandbed in smaller tanks, you should have a smaller sandbed with lots of vaccuming for ditritus during water changes.

Just my 2cents, 2nd hand knowledge :-D

link
 

try the link now http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=392144&goto=newpost

when you siphon water, stick the end of the hose into the sand and it will suck up sand and water at the same time

i have a ywg in my sump that has a 4" dsb. he refuses to stay in the sand area and aways ends up in the other side of the sump without sand. it has been living there for about a year and will eat any left over foods that get into that area. i'm always expecting to find a dead YWG but its been a year and its still there. so as far as my fish is concern, it doesn't need sand but others may contradict this.

if you have fish that needs sand to bury into (wrasse) put a small 2-3" shallow container of sand under the rockwork where it will eventually find it and use it.

I remember reading that also,he was talking about the size of the sand bed needing to be large enough to support all the organizms to brake down detrius from the first step right through the Nitrification/Denitrifacation cycle.But even a small sand bed will help take nitrates out of the water,provided its the correct depth and grain size.But it needs to be kept clean.Or it adds to the Nitrate problem,rather than helping with it.

To switch to BB I would just take all water and everything out, and then empty out the sand.

IMO if you try and suck the sand out, it can bring up a lot of old detrius and what not and could cause a spike.

In your case, since it's only a 20g, I wouldn't hesitate to empty the tank out and start from scratch. If you're prepared and have everything ready, I can't see why it couldn't be done within a couple hours. What I would do:
1. siphon out as much water as you need to house the livestock temporary
2. transfer your livestock over
3. siphon the rest out into another container to be reuse
4. remove the sand
5. scrub down your tank (optional)
6. rebuild your reef

I have a BB fish only with about 70lb of liverock sitting on 1/4" glass and it seem do be doing just fine. The bottom is completely covered in coraline and it blends in very well the the rocks. IF you can carefully place your rocks in a secure manner I wouldn't bother with any other media on the bottom.

Correct, it would help with the nitrates by making those oxygen deprived areas. But, his concern was that such a small square footage of sandbed would eventualy become stagnant because it does not support enough life to clean up the bed. Hence the DSB crashes (for smaller tanks)

In short form: :biggrin:

Nitrate sink yes - but cannot export ditritus properly and becomes saturated causing a ton of issues.

Sand in a bucket for a nitrate sink has been passed around lately. But you need to move the water across the bed fast enough so that it does not let ditritus settle. Otherwise you would have the same issue as the small DSB sized tanks.

I was thinking that if OCDP found that BB was too hard on his YWG.After he cleaned the old sand from his tank,he could add a couple inches of fine sand in an easy to reach part of the tank.Maybe use a dam so it stays where he wants it.If its easy to reach,he can clean it and his YWG will be happy too.Would take some landscaping,maybe more than he wants to do.But its an option.

I dont think this idea is what your looking for, but I tried the faux sand-bed. I absolutely love it so far, couldnt be anything better, I think it throws all the bonuses in one. I have expoxied a sand-bed into the bottom of my 75g tank, and love the results. Basically, you get a sandbed look without all the drawbacks. Syphoning is easy, and it also protects the glass like starboard. The only drawbacks that I have found are that you cannot keep critters that need sand, its not removable, and corraline will grow on it and is hard to get off if you dont want it there. Personaly I like the corraline on it, but if you ever want it off, an urchin would probably do the trick. Also, you could do a high-gloss epoxy finish over it aswell, so that its smooth, but still with the sandbed look.

Just my 2 cents, if anyone wants more info, feel free to ask.

Chris