In mine I have half MM and half sand. After all the reading you can do on both who knows?? I've never (knock on wood) had any bad algae problems. I was planning on taking out the MM soon is it has been there for two years or so, I was not going to replace it with anything except live rock maybe sand. MM has really taken a beating as to it's value and called a scam many times yet many people still use it. Live sand just seems to have a life span and issues that are different for every tank. You just have to know one day it'll have negative effects and need replacing.
You can read arguments for both or none. I don't think you can get an answer like, ‘do it this way.” It is just one fraction in a big equation that the better balanced you are at the end, the better your tank does.
So having not really answered your question I’d go sand bed. Add some Macro algae’s get as much diversity of pods and critters as possible going on in there.
Good luck.
Dave
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