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No sandbed?


Elizzy

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I'm going to transfer my 55 gallon acrylic to a 55 gallon glass, this weekend (Thanks Petco!). I never imagined what a 'pita' acrylic could be (special scrapers), and since the tank was second hand, parts of it are fuzzy. I tried fixing it with a professional sanding kit for acrylic tanks - HA! I think that's what caused my tennis elbow...It would be great for live rock cycling though -- so if anyone is interested in purchasing it, please let me know.

Anyhow, when I moved, I only put about a cup or two of my old sand into the tank. In my last tank, the sandbed was full of bristleworms, in fact, I couldn't get a handle on them....yes, yes, I know a population explosion is usually the result of overfeeding, but I seriously wasn't overfeeding. I fed my fish one cube of mysis every 3-4 days. I believe the bristleworms were eating coral (saw it), attacking fish (hole in goby) and snails... Now I haven't seen a bristleworm in a couple of weeks (YAY!). I pulled the last one out a week ago (I swear it was going for some snails that had fallen and were upside-down).

Right now I've got some sand under some bubble coral and plate coral...but that's it. My acans are on the bare floor and seem happy enough. I'm considering removing the sand altogether. Has anyone had experience with this? I only worry about the plate because it's used to being on sand, but if you think he'd be fine on a glass bottom, I'd love to lose all the sand. The tanks seems a whole lot cleaner with the little amount I have now.

Would love to read your thoughts.

Thanks and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

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It's not terribly unusual to see tanks run bare bottom. You lose out on the biological filtration capacity of the sand, and the space for benthic organisms to reproduce, but the positive is that you don't have nearly as much space for crud to accumulate. the decision is largely aesthetic.

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