abcha0s' 300G Ultimate Reef

[abcha0s]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

All throughout the planning stages on my current tank I was convinced I would stay BB for it. I've run smaller tanks BB and it was always amazing to me how much vaccuuming was required every week to keep them BB. Sandbeds hide this aspect which is both good and bad: it may look good but what lurks beneath?

In the end I chickened out and put sand in at the last minute. Two reasons, actually maybe three: 1) The rockwork that I built for myself has various supporting structures (combo of of acrylic and PVC on different pieces of it) and sand does a nice job of hiding that - otherwise I would have had to use rubble and I'm not a huge fan of rubble piles. 2) The silicone on the bottom edges is supremely thick and it was distracting to look at so sand hides that. And then 3) I have some fish that prefer to bury in sand at night and I thought it would be a kinder thing to offer them that.

I have to say that I still prefer the look of a shallow sand bed even with all the aggravation it causes. Sand storms, bacterial clumping etc.etc. I have a cleanup crew including sand dollars, conchs and nassarius and for the most part they keep up. I also put some moon snails in there but in hindsight this was a questionable move. They do an *incredible* job of turning sand over, but they are predatory. Nice newby level mistake on my part: buy first, research later. Oops. It's too bad, they are really neat snails. Look exactly like the apple sized moon snails you can find on on the BC coast but at 1" in size (and pure white in colour).

So I like the look, but I TOTALLY understand why some choose not to.

Hey Tony - As always, thanks for the feedback and ideas. I'm in the camp that really doesn't like the bare bottom look. I also have all kinds of crazy looking structures under my rock, so bare bottom isn't really an option with this tank.

It's really just one more thing to learn about. Lot's of people have successful Shallow Sand Beds. I just have to figure out how to manage it.

I've been starting to think about moving some fish over. Probably not for another week or two as I want to make some new introductions before transferring my existing stock. I might send you a PM about the fish trap that you used.

- Brad