bare bottom tank

[Amadod2]

I'm just not sure if I should clean my sand, my levels are all good but I have hair algae from when my tank crashed in the summer

[SteveCGY]

Originally Posted by Amadod2

I'm just not sure if I should clean my sand, my levels are all good but I have hair algae from when my tank crashed in the summer

Sand is the devil. Always had trouble with urn only way I had half ads tank was to stir and tornado daily. I finally went with just anough sand for rocks to barely sit on and algae went away. From now I hate sand and only put it whee rocks are so they sit nicer ajendont scratch glass. Sand is bad. Lots of matience I found. Diatoms and that red algae like crazy with it.. plus hated my fish scooping and dropping it on my corals. Went with sand just enough to barely cover glass and will never go back. I goundbtur sand as my biggest enemy. Went from 50lb dry in 60gallon g be to 5lb dry and way better.Also it increased my water volume by 7gallons which helps with perimeter swings.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

I always use the coarser grade not the sugar fine sand.

Doesn't get stirred up as easily.

I keep lots of leopard wrasses so some sand flies up when they dig themselves in, but no sandsifting gobies who like to drop sand on all your favourite corals.

[Aquattro]

I've done both BB and sand, never noticed any difference in corals, and didn't really like the BB look. For me, a display tank needs sand to look right.

[Myka]

I prefer BB in SPS systems because 100x turnover will even blow coral gravel around. I like the look of a "Starboard" bottom which is a brand name of HDPE or cutting board plastic. I had a tank all set up with the HDPE to transfer my SPS tank into, but the new tank never got water, so I don't know how that would have worked out. I know algae sticks to acrylic way worse than glass, but HDPE might be too slick to have that issue, so maybe I would have regretted it, maybe not. My BB SPS tank was about 50% coralline covered, but it never grew in all the way. It looked good where the coralline was, but aesthetically speaking, I don't like the look of the bare glass.

[Proteus]

I tried coarse substrate in my tank but didn't like the added time it took to vacuum. The bottom glass is painted black so looks alright and coraline will eventually cover it

[don.ald]

Attachment 13649this pic is old, but you can see how things cover the BB. Over time the zoas over took the blue cloves. The downside was they also grew up the sides of the glass and it was a chore to keep it clear.