Sand or No Sand

[Reeferwab]

Been out of the hobbie for awhile and looking to start things back up. Around the time I left, there were beginning discussions as to whether use Sand or not use Sand. Curious as to what the opinions now.

 

[Sophie"s mom]

IT is 100% a personal preference. I have gobies in my tank so I have a 2 1/2" sandbed. There are definitely some pluses to no sand. However even without gobies, I prefer the look of sand. So it is about your personal preference as well as what inhabitants you want.

 

[Ironfish]

Agree. It's 100% a personal choice.

The biggest benefit of no sand is to keep the tank cleaner and pollutants lower.

In my opinion tanks look better with sand and I like to keep sand sifter gobies, stars, snails, etc... plus leopard wrasses.

 

[fushi]

Been out of the hobbie for awhile and looking to start things back up. Around the time I left, there were beginning discussions as to whether use Sand or not use Sand. Curious as to what the opinions now.

I think you’ll find it to be around a 50/50 split. Bare bottom is cleaner, but sand looks better in my opinion.

Choose what you will be happy to look at.

 

[KrisReef]

Nothing to add except if you’re going to buy sand the live sand in a bag isn’t the same live sand that you can get from live rock sellers in the Gulf of America.

Bag sand should be washed clean of fines before using, but Gulf sand goes in neat.

 

[bluemon]

I've always been a sand person, but beyond the big argument of cleanliness, my deciding factor was the types of animals I could keep:

With sand:

I could keep more wrasses, and certain inverts that like shifting sand around that probably wouldn't thrive as much on a bare bottom, like nassarius, conches, cucumbers, some brittle stars, etc.

Without sand:

You can keep more corals on the sandbed! You really can't place some coral right on sand since the grains can irritate and kill many LPS and SPSs, but now you can place them right on, and some can encrust right onto the floor, which is quite an amazing look. (with chalices and favias)

I wish there was a nice hybrid; maybe a dropoff tank with the deeper side being sand, and the top being barebottom? but it's only a matter of time until sand gets to the top portion.

 

[jpmazzone]

I am about to start a new tank (50 gallon IM AIO) and I am going to go bare bottom. I plan to go bare bottom and put Tampa Bay Live Rock in the AIO chambers. I found that with smaller tanks, it is harder to get great flow that can keep the detritus in the water column and you don't have a lot of room to siphon it out. The 50 nuvo AIO has two return ports and I am going to plumb a return to aim right at the bare bottom to suspend everything. We'll see if it works but I am tired of dealing with dirty sand. It causes more problems for me. I will be limited as to what I can keep but the ease of flow and maintenance will be worth it to me.