Should i switch??

[Skimmerking]

Originally Posted by pat

Ok i've been reading about the advantages of running a bare bottom tank.
So my question is,i have an established sand bed that i would like to siphon out of my reef tank and go bare bottom.
Do you guys and girls see anything bad that could result from doing this?
I'm sure i can get it out by only siphoning 5 gallons(sand and water),I do 5 gallon a week change regardless.
I do have a stocked tank,sps,lps,clams ect...
Thanks
Pat

Hope this makes sense?????

Pat with a BB tank your not dealing with dirty glass when i had my DSB the glass was dirty all the time. I was cleaning the glass every day and with a BB tank Im cleaning once a week or twice a week.. yes with a DSB you get 0 nitrates, but you have a build up of crap from the tank that you don't see. WIth my BB tank Im sucking out crapevery week depending on the flow of course.

Lots of people will jack the flow up and have the crap always suspended for the over flow to take away so the skimmer to clean. At first the tank will look unreal until the coraline will start to grow and then you will have lots of coraline. HOwever with lots of coraline comes lots of CAlcium usage. So its 2 of one and a half dozen on the other It seems that we can not ever win. There is always something that you have to tweak in the tank. I love the BB look its easier to have the rocks jacked up for lots of flow in the reef. But If you have lots of rock the bio filteration should take care of the nitrates. Well We hope it does I run a Cs 250 on my 65 with a 75 gal sump and I have mangroves and suck the crap out of my sump too monthly and run filter socks that i change all the time.

With mine tank i have a 65 gal mixed reef with semi hard flow. at first i had over 94X turnover with my tunze's in the sps tank/ But for some reason I couldn't keep certain SPs / Well most of the sps weere RTNing from the bottom for some reason. My levels were all good but something was wrong. SO I switched to LPS and softies, leathers. and a few hardy SPs that I know I could keep.

But at the end of the day Its all up to the person running the tank....

HTH.

mike