Pros & Cons of substrate??

mr.vegas

mr.vegas

New Member
Well my friens I will be moving and my new house wont be done till january.Long story short.I have a 75 gal.tank no live rock just pink somoen sand. Would anybody who has delt with sand AND crushed coral please give me the pros and cons. The sand gets all over the place when I try to clean it but looks sooooo real. To be honest I would like to keep it as low maintenance as possible(even though I like spending 4 or 5 hrs on my weekends).I will probably be keeping;
Flame angel
Bicolor angel
2 heniouchas(black and white)
Royal Gramma
Cleaner Shrimp
and IF I can manage to have no more than 20 lbs. of live rock, but not necessary
at all a wrasse of some sort.
SUBSTRATE is the key ? guys so help me out.
Thanks in advance...
 
mr . salty

mr . salty

Active Member
Sand is the BEST. Abour 3-4 inches will do. I had CC and the nitrates were always way out of controle. I tried everything,even added an algae refugium under themain tank.Nothing worked till I switched to live sand. Within a couple days the nitrates were down to 15ppm. They are now less than 10ppm.And the sand stays clean. No hiding places for that food that got away. A good cleanup crew,and an overactive golden headed gobie keep it clean as new. I have not done anything to this sand bed except level it out every week or so.Anything but sand is a mistake in my personal experiance.
 
ironreef

ironreef

Member
if the sand is live it won't get all over. The worms,mini stars and snails in the sand are the best clean up crew. It can reduce nitrates if dsb. If you have corals the animals spawn and release food for the corals ect. ect...
 
goofieones

goofieones

Member
Well I have crushed shells for the bottom, though it does look good, go with Live Sand. If I had to do it all over agian I sure would use sand. Man what a pain in the butt to vacuum the bottom. Plus there are many fish that would only appreciate the sand. I am in the process of investigating changing to live sand, and probably will be doing so in the next month. I just wish I found this board in time for me to find out the benefits of the live sand.
 
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