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Sand or no sand??

Vincerama2

Vincerama2

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Hi guys, so here is my next big decision (sort of)... Sand or no sand?

The tank "Wifebane" is a 180. And it sits on "starboard" so the bottom is white, and I expect if I left it sandless it will turn coralline colored.

The problem I've had with sand in the past is that ... corals fall into it and die. Idiot snails tip over in it and die. It's really hard to keep clean.
I bought a pair of Ecotech something or others and don't want them to create sand storms.

BUT...

Lots of stuff lives in sand and that's pretty cool.

Currently I'm leaning towards maybe no sand at the beginning and dumping some in later.

But I really enjoy the "stuff lives in sand" like nassarius snails and worms and ... who knows, maybe a jawfish or something.

Thoughts? Opinions?

V
 
detritus is a lot harder to siphon out during water changes when you have sand.

While I have seen quite a few successful tanks with sand, I have never been successful with it for precisely what you have already said. In my coral only tank I had a tiny sandbed just cuz... and yeah it was kind of neat after a few months a ton of feather dusters were popping out of there, however sand did get blown around quite easily, it did collect nasty stuff in some corners where flow kind of died off, and lastly I noticed diatom/algae growth on the glass occurred much more rapidly with sand (probably due to the dying crap in the sand). Now could some sort of sand sifting critter have helped this? Perhaps, I did have a few nassarius snails in there, but they didn't seem to do much. I've had the brown "poop" cucumber before and when I saw him eat sand and poop out blocks of sand I imagine he was actually cleaning it (although could have just been going for the bacteria or critters in the sand and less the "dirt").

Its your choice man. I wouldn't put sand in a display tank simply because I couldn't figure out how to make it work well. In a larger tank it might be a bit easier, because the flow from your powerheads has more water to go through and not bounce off the glass and go downward, but... who knows.

I have been thinking of putting a BIG refugium in my next tank that has sand though. I really want to do sea grasses or even something as simple as caulpera prolifera. I probably will do it... and it probably will still collect a bunch of dirt and garbage (might have to start using filter socks to prevent detritus from getting to it)... and I probable will regret the decision and end up siphoning it all out later :D
 
I have a sand bed, I covered most of it with a lot of broken snail shells, I also have a serpent star, a conch and hermit crabs, this crew keeps going round & round disturbing the surface of the sandbed, the abundance of shells encourages the crabs to swap shells often so basically on the surface nothing ever stays put and I would have to say I like it :)
 
There are some other options:
1) Sand in a dish.
Basically, make a bowl lined with live rock, and put sand in it.
If done right, can look pretty natural.

2) Epoxy sand to starboard / bottom.
Yes, it gets covered eventually, but at least short term looks way better than bare acyrlic.

NOTE: Sand can act as a barrier between islands of coral.
That can be handy to keep small tufts of zoas/palys from spreading.

For me : I have sand, and it is a royal pain. I have replaced it once, since old
sand was more flake-like, and turned to concrete.
In my new fuge-DT2, I epoxied sand to the bottom, and may do a sand-bowl-thing.
If that goes well, I may change my main DT.
 
NOTE: Sand can act as a barrier between islands of coral.
That can be handy to keep small tufts of zoas/palys from spreading.
Click to expand...
Not all of them, some of the more aggressive kinds will mat out over the sand, maybe not as quickly but I've seen it happen. Upside those ones are super ease to peel off for a frag swap or something.
 
One of the last speakers, I forget her name, spoke of how she was an advocate of a DSB and how important it was for her nems.

I've never had to deal with sand since all of my tanks started off as BB. I do have to flip a snail or two every other day, but that sure beats having to vacuum and care for a sandbed.

One other option is to create little islands of rock also, to help with a barren bottom.
 
I would say sand. While ironic, it seems rather unnatural to not have sand. While my 20L is BB, I still prefer the aesthetic look of sand. Also, I would like to have snails, crabs, gobies, and jawfish turn over the sand since having extra critters is always cool.
 
I changed my mind. Sandless doesn't look good at all. I dumped in like 3-4 5 gallon buckets of sand.

I decided that part of what I like about a reef tank is all the weird life that grows in a reef, and a lot of that stuff lives in the sand.

V
 
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