Is bare bottom a good choice?

[gjuarez]

Hello fello reefers, just last week I went bare bottom on my tank. I took out all of my live sand after reading Bomber's thread on reef central. It made sense to me to have a lot of flow and heavy skimming to get rid of detritus before it breaks down. Have any of you ever tried this? DId it work? What difference did it do to you parameters? Nitrates? At the time I felt I was making a good choice. I dont regret it now but I just want to know what long term effects it has on a tank, if any?

[jlam]

I had a 75 that was up for 3 years without any problems cycled the tank about 25 times an hour and skimmed pretty heavy with bare bottom. I did not have any problems with nitrates but I only kept 6 small to med fish and ran a refugium 20% water change every month. I have seen lots of tanks that are bare bottom that are really nice. I guess there are pros and cons of both systems and it just depends on what you are looking for in your tank.

JL

[TexasState]

If you're going bare bottom, make sure you have high amount of circulation and be prepared to vacuum out the nasty detrius during your water changes.

[gjuarez]

thanks for the replies guys. My flow is at about 40x turnover and I have started removing the detritus. My tank looks very clean and coraline algae is starting to grow on my tank's bottom. Did you guys do any type of mechanilcal filtration or biological filtration? Bomber recommended not too, even felt bags and foam. Just an aggressive skimmer setup to take out wet skimmate. How did you guys do it and did it work out for you?

[MikeDeL]

If I was going to go bare bottom, I would let a bunch of zoos grow and spread all over the bottom glass. That way you would have a zoo lawn. I think that would be kind of cool.

[gjuarez]

I thought about that. I also wanted a mushroom deep sand bed. I decided to keep it like that because I dont want detritus to accumulate in the bottom. I have very strong flow hitting the bottom and everytihng get swept away by the flow.

[AlexKilpatrick]

Do you guys know of an inexpensive place in Austin to get Starboard or cutting board for a bare-bottom subtrate?

I'm still trying to figure out how to generate a cutting template for my bowfront.

[JimD]

Check with Regal plastics on Metric or Austin plastics on Kramer. You can make a template using newspaper, just fold it along the curve, cut it, and transpose it to cardboard. Might take a few times to get it exact, but it works. hth

[AlexKilpatrick]

Thanks, Jim.

Part of the problem is that I am trying to do two things in parallel. I have the tank full right now, checking out the plumbing. That makes it hard to generate a paper template, because I would really need to drain it. This would be so much easier if I had a rectangular tank. :( Ideally, I would like to have a perfect template, and have one of those places cut it. I could cut it myself, but I have a hunch they could do a better job.

[JeffCo]

Go with regal plastics. If you draw out a plan with the dimensions they will cut it for you. I had mine custom cut out of 1/4 " black HDPE for my 375 gallon.

[gjuarez]

Jeffco and jim d, what are your experiences with a starboard bottom?