Thinking of going bare bottom!

[FitoPharmer]

I use tumbled marble flooring tiles for my bare bottom. They are turning out to be way better then sand! I am planning on having a Zoa garden bottom as well. I'm planning to try and have a single species per tile. Hopefully it will fill out into a cool checker board pattern. The plus side to the tiles is they are turning out to be a neat version of nutrient export. If a tile gets covered in a little too much algae it can be easily removed from the tank scraped, scrubbed, and washed before returning it. Or you can buy some spares and just replace with new ones and bleach the old ones. The tiles do not seem to grown any additional nuisance algae either. substrate and flow!

[mark]

if you go BB it doesn't stay that way for long due coralline algae growth. I finally got some zoas growing on the bottom of mine but seems they do prefer growing on rubble. Did have a fair bit of monti plate growing directly on the bottom that was neat but lost in my SPS crash.

Here's a link to a Canreef thread showing a GSP bottomed display

[LeeR]

raw marble tile

[FitoPharmer]

Originally Posted by MacheteAvenue

raw marble tile

awesome! do you find corals grow faster on the marble tiles?

[LeeR]

Originally Posted by FitoPharmer

awesome! do you find corals grow faster on the marble tiles?

just as fast as on rock

[whatcaneyedo]

Its mostly personal preference I guess. I'm a sand person, always have been always will be. I tried BB in my frag tank for a few months but I didnt like even in there it so I put back a very fine layer.

[Reefer Rob]

Ya, I like the look of sand, but I have to have the flow, and my Wife's been asking me to go bare bottom for a long time. The 2 Dart pumps I have for circulation worked OK while my corals were small, but with everything filling in they're just not cutting it.

Seeing the amount of flow in Ian's tank made me re-evaluate my current setup. I noticed that the flow from my return pumps was no longer making it to the center of the tank, and the polyps were weren't moving like they used to.

It's time to make some changes. I'm pretty sure if I just let my tank keep growing in without adding flow it's heading for a major crash.

[kien]

My bottom is bare right now! Oh wait.. was that TMI ??

Actually, I am a sand person too. I tried bare bottom for a period of time in my previous 90 gallon and loved it. However, when I set up my new 150 I found all that bottom glass lacking something so I put in a sprinkling of sand. I like the look of both, but in my current tank I just preferred having sand.

If you have the correct configuration with the tank, aquascaping, flow equipment, etc, you can maintain a decent amount of flow without blasting the sand bottom. For example, powerheads like the vortech have a nice gentle wide area of flow which is great for corals and won't blast your sandbed. There are lots of great SPS rich tanks out there with sand bottoms. I wouldn't personally suggest that every SPS tank needs super amounts of flow. Good quality flow is key, not necessarily lots of flow. It just happens that a lot of times to achieve the proper quality of flow, cranking up the amount of flow follows, but is not always necessary.

[Skimmerking]

BB was great for me lots of flow the snails if they fell it was easier for them toget back on there way too. With sand you loose the wrasses that I love, but there is always a down side. Just remember you will get coraline Algae growning on the bottom and that means the CAL and ALk levels will increase alot too.

Coraline algae consumes huge CAL and ALK demands

[OceanicCorals-Ian-]

Originally Posted by asmodeus

BB was great for me lots of flow the snails if they fell it was easier for them toget back on there way too. With sand you loose the wrasses that I love, but there is always a down side. Just remember you will get coraline Algae growning on the bottom and that means the CAL and ALk levels will increase alot too.

Coraline algae consumes huge CAL and ALK demands

I agree with the Coraline algae as it has all but completely covered the floor of my tank; however, I also have three Wrasses for over 2 years and they are very happy with their surroundings. Wrasses will get used to no sand and eventually wedge themselves into the rocks at night.