Adding sand?

[bchbum189]

I am new to reef tanks and am hearing condesending comments on adding sand or some form of substrate. My local fish shop says no way on sand, but on here i keep seeing pretty much most of all reef tanks using sand, I have a 55gal tank with 60lbs of lr and 2 clowns, flame angel, bi color blenny and skunk shrimp, plus 2 corals and clean up crew. I dont like the looks of a bare bottom tank but have heard not to do it. Plus could i even add sand into an already set up tank? Or would i have to remove everything to add this? thanks

 

[slick]

My advice is to add sand a little at a time. The best way to add it to a already set up tank would be to rinse the sand, and then pour it through a piece of pvc pipe. The reason for the pipe is to keep the sand from going all over the place. You can control where it goes, just keep it close to the bottom of your tank. Sand overall will add a lot of benifits to your system. But I have also seen some really nice bare bottom reefs. And as a piece of advice, listen to the people here and not your lfs. They are there to make money, and the people here want you to do well and have nothing to gain.

 

[bchbum189]

i could understand if they said something inorder to sell me something else, but they sold sand and didnt reccomend it and stood to make nothing off of their reccomendation, i do like your idea with the pvc pipe it makes since
how much harder will adding sand make to keeping the tank clean, and cleaning the sand its self?

 

[slick]

You dont have to clean the sand, you can get some inverts that claen it for you. It will also help break down wastes from fish. In many cases having a sand bed will make your tank more stable IMO and by them telling you not to do it could lead to you haveing to buy more fish down the road.