Vacuuming a sand bed or not That is my question

[Basile]

I did a few LFS in the area and they all said the same thing as Diana here. You have a population of critters in your sand bed that establishe itself . If every week or two weeks you disturb that ; your getting rid of alot of helpers and those bacteria who helps you. Never mind shallow or deep it doesn't matter. Like they said if you have deposit of detritus, its because you don't have the correct CUC . Many do the vacuuming to avoid putting out for the right amount of cuc. But the down side is your compounding the problem by destroying lots of bacterias and critters on your side. They even pointed out an example of a nut case with a spatulas on the tank sides because they didn't like the colors. LOL like he said the dim witted did realise it was her bacterias working for her denitrifying her tank and transforming the polutants into less damaging chemical and elements rejouvenating and making it available to the corals. But no it wasn't pretty. Nature has its ways and works , you just have to let it. In any case theirs no right or wrong in this hobby just styles, if it works for you and enjoy your workload happy reefing. :thumbup:

[MitchM]

Originally Posted by Basile

...You have a population of critters in your sand bed that establishe itself . If every week or two weeks you disturb that ; your getting rid of alot of helpers and those bacteria who helps you. Never mind shallow or deep it doesn't matter....

Basile, that is incorrect.
A Deep Sand Bed in a reef aquarium is like a separate organism in itself. In Canada it is almost impossible to properly construct, populate and re-populate one with the appropriate organisms.
You can run your aquarium however you like of course, but your statement above does not apply to a sandbed that will help process wastes in the long run.
If you don't maintain your substrate, you will be dealing with excess nutrient problems eventually.
By maintaining I mean manually removing any detritus buildup.