Sand bed, Pros and Cons
 

Ok, the seed of thought has been planted in my head now that I'm moving/upgrading my tank. Should I try bare bottom? One of the issues is that I'd like to keep my manderine. Do I need a sand bed for it or will copapods grow solely in the live rock? Any other pros and cons would be appriciated. I figure now is the best time to decide.

Thanks

What type of system are you going to be setting up? A mainly SPS system? Barebottoms are great for some types of system, but not so great for others.

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Well, its mostly LPS and softies with a few SPS down the road.

I think a sandbed, even a thin one is nessesary for the physcological well being of fish. every one of my fish has an interaction with the sand bed. my wrasse sleeps in it and hunts food out of it, my goby sifts it, my angel and tang suck whatever algae there is on it. Im probaly wrong on this but I would never go bare bottom.

just a country boys opinion

tb

If you are doing mainly LPS and softies with very few SPS, I would go with a sandbed. If you go barebottom you'd have to jack up the flow to keep detritus suspended (which your LPS and softies wouldn't like) or slow down the flow so you can suck it up off the bottom (which you SPS wouldn't like).

Well, my tangs eat the algae from my BB, so I'll have to offer a different opinion.
Really, unless you have a fish that requires sand to sleep in or sift through, it comes down to owner preference...

Re: Sand bed, Pros and Cons
 

they live in the rock, but what you can do is take some ugly rock and break it up into 1" size chunks and make pod piles in behind your rock work for a breading ground for the bugs.

Steve

I am going to offer a different opinion on this also, with a rock structure and no sand bed you will have plenty of lower flow areas and you can even place your rock to creat areas for lower flow type corals. people think that corals will get bashed around in tanks with high turn over but this in't realy true, in high turn over tanks that have poorly though out flow patterens and or old style power heads that just blast the water then yes, but if you use bigger outlets on your return and go with tunze or Seio type power heads it will be fine. I have over a 70X turn over rate in my tank and no where in my tank is there more than a gental current, as I am moving the whole water colume not just 1/4 of it as most setups do.
I have mushrooms on my rocks and they remain still and not blasted in anyway except for the ones I have right at the outlet of my Tunze that I placed on the bottom of the tank about 4" from the rock.

you don't have to keep the crap suspended as it will find an area to settle and you can syphon it out with water changes, but it is easy to suspend it if you find that what you want to do.

Steve

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I'd like to try bare bottom so I might lend my manderine to someone just until I'm convinced that I have a good pod population. I guess its easier to add a sandbed down the road then to remove one.

Does a mandarin really care if it has sand in the tank? I'm not so sure. I had scooters who would bury themselves at night but mandarins that I've kept would simply sleep on top of the sand, not in it. And I'm not so sure that having a sandbed means you have more bugs in the tank for hunting, really the best breeding grounds for bugs and pods is basically anyplace where they can't be hunted (so pod piles and / or refugia, and so on).

I used to think my fairy wrasses would care if there was no sand bed, as I used to have a C. rubriventralis who would occasionally sleep buried in the sand. Eventually he stopped doing that though, in preference for spots in the rocks that he could make a sleeping cocoon. I have never observed my C. lubbocki or my C. cyanopleura sleep in the sand either, they find nooks and crevasses to sleep in and they seem to be OK with that. So personally I've lost another reason to not abandon the sand bed since I used to say "my fairy wrasse sleeps in the sand bed."

Sand sifting gobies, and burrowing fish such as jawfish require a soft subtrate still of course. Of course in the case of a jawfish you not only require a sand bed but you require a DEEP sandbed so the fish can make a burrow with the proper depth and so on.

But as for other fish, at least, I can't imagine that any of my fish (tang, wrasses, clowns, hawkfish, blenny) care enough about the sandbed that whether it's there or not has any impact on psychological well being. I'd say rocks with hiding holes and texture is more important to them.

Now LPS though .. I always thought some LPS look better on sand. Open brain corals, plate corals, etc. I think these seem to belong on a sandbed. I suppose you could have them on a hard substrate but it seems kind of .. I dunno .. not quite right. :confused: :question: