[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Myka

Steve, I would LOVE a bare bottom tank, but I have 2 Jawfish in there. I did already remove the majority of the sand, just leaving some deep sections for the Jawfish. I might move the Jawfish out and remove the rest of the sand in the future.

ah, forgot you had sand fish in there. I did sugest that because I found after about a year with a DSB I started getting algae/crap like you were describing and after going to a bare bottom, I didn't thave the problems anymore. I feel there are a couple main reasons for this.. after a while I think the sand bed gets "full" of crap as there is no way in captivity we can keep the amount of different critters required to keep a sand bed healthy, so eventualy as it gets disturbed all that junk is re-released into the water. the second reason is that with out the sand it allows you to creat a much larger flow through out the tank which prevents cyno and other things from acumalation by keeping them suspended in the water which allows more efficient removal by the skimmer.

now when I start up my next tank, it isn't going to be a glass bottom but rather I am going to use travintine tiles(or how ever you spell it) which are a natural lime stone for the bottom. it is porus and will alow corals and what not to attach more easily, and seeing I am going to be setting it up as a very high PAR tank, I will have encrusting SPS and others SPS right on the bottom of the tank, with only a few rocks as show pieces. kinda like a zen style tank.

Steve