Bare bottom
 

Whats the benifit. If there is one

Won't blow around in high flow.
Won't trap detritus.

Easier to keep clean.
Can syphon out detritus, uneaten food etc a lot easier.
Can have a ton of flow for SPS and not have to worry about sand storms.

Yeah that makes sense. I figured about housekeeping. Is there setbacks to it.

I have sand bed and have no plans to rid of it. Just noticed talk about bare glass

the downsides are appearance.....some people dont like the "LFS" look.....another downer is you cant keep certain kinds of fish that sleep in the sand....

+1 and you'll have to scrape the bottom to keep it clean looking.

You will lack a certain amount of zooplankton that settle and live and reproduce in the sand. And you will lack the biofilter that develop in the sand.

I was on the edge about removing the sand in my nano but before I put the sand my little blue legged hermit crab were always stuck upside down because they had no grip to move around on the glass, so I did put sand just so that they can move easily and the look is MUCH better too.

Not really.

It gets covered in coraline, which becomes hard to scrape. I feel it's an eye sore and secretly laugh at them behind their back. Lol.

I never have seen a beach with a pink sand either.

Pro-sand.

My tank is semi-bare bottomed. There is just a bit of sand on one end. I have several wrasses in there that like to sleep in the sand, that's why it is there. There isn't really enough for them to bury themselves, but they still lay in it at night. They don't seem to mind. I also have a Fighting Conch that doesn't seem to care about the sand, he goes all around the tank. Where there is no sand coralline has grown. I don't know why anyone would want to scrape the coralline off the bottom as I find the look of bare glass to be unsightly. Coralline in my tank is never bright pink, it is always pastel pink, so it really doesn't look much different than sand, plus when there is coralline the critters like shrimp and crabs can get grip and move about. I'm all for bare bottomed tanks - especially in SPS tanks. For LPS tanks, I prefer sand.

This was my thought exactly. Though I am no where near educated in this hobby as others are. I was sure that there must have been biological benifits. My sand bed is 3" so it's not DSB but I have lots of wrasses and gobies that sleep in sand
Ive seen my fish bolt into the sand and would be worried that they may hurt themselves if it wasn't deep enough

The sand needs to be a properly maintained DSB in order to have any bio-filtering capabilities. There is definitely more zooplankton in tanks with sand though.

Mindy. What is properly maintained. Is it more than cuc

Bare bottom and i LUV it...with a mosly sps reef the sand would be flying.And if some acro frag falls,it's not dying on the sand.

you need a working DSB, which is pretty much impossable. we cannot sustain in our tanks what it keeps to properly maintain a DSB so you eventualy have problems.

Steve