bare bottom tanks

[miked78231]

what are the benefits of bare bottom tanks? do you need a certain tank or specific equip. to make this happen? i like the way they look and i was thinking about going with the bare bottom but i have a feeling there is much more to it then just taking the sand out of your tank.

[hobogato]

VERY good skimmer. other than that, ill let some of the BB guys chime in here.

[Jimnorris]

My new tank and my old tank (Texas nano) were bare bottom beacause I hated the way a DSB looks!
Jim

[miked78231]

could i keep a BB with a red sea HOB skimmer and a HOB eheim filter? i will be upgrading later but for now thats all i have. what do BB'ers put on the bottom of the tank? ive seen some that looks like they just spray painted it or somthing.

[falcondob]

If you have a minimum bed, mine is less than 3/4 - 1" of reef-grade sand, do you still get the benefits of "bare-bottom"?

[thedude]

I'll chime in-

First off the bottom of my tank is starboard (cutting board material) and I got it somewhere on the web that I can't remember. Honestly, it may have been cabela's as they use this material in boats. You want to have something between the glass bottom and rocks so the bottom doesn't crack after a rock falls.

The basic principal is that with a barebottom tank, you can have enough flow to keep everything in suspension and remove it through skimming and siphoning before it has a chance to break down. In my 30 gallon tank I have over 3,000 gph of flow, and still have problems with stuff settling. I take a turkey baster to the rocks daily to blast gunk up into the water column.

The other huge part like Josh mentioned, is having one heck of a skimmer working for you. The red sea skimmer isn't going to cut it, it just doesn't put out enough bubbles. I have a Euroreef CS6-1 on a 30 gallon and I sometimes wonder if I had gone bigger, what the result would be.

You'd see some of the benefits with a shallow sandbed like you're describing falcondob, but you'd have to siphon out the sand regularly. The whole point to a barebottom is that the sand bed has all these nutrients in it that just don't get taken out and they decay. Steve Weast of Oregonreef uses a shallow sandbed but has no sand under his rock structure and siphons out the entire thing every 1/2 year and replaces it with new.

[miked78231]

thanks