Ok. I've been out of the hobby for a couple of years, but am going to be getting back into it with a Red Sea Max 65 gallon system. A friend of mine is getting rid of it and from what I can tell he has about 65 lbs of live rick in it already. The question I'm still trying to answer is whether I should set the tank up with a bare bottom or with substrate. In the past, I've kept both but had the best results with a bare tank. What's the latest on substrate and it's set up. I would love to get the biological filtration with the substrate but haven't been successful in the past. Thanks for the help.
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Bare Tank or Substrate??
- Thread starter jsweeney76@yahoo.com
- Start date
I went bare bottom for 15 years. I always hated the look of that. I recently went to fine aragonite sand a year ago. I bought the sand about 5 years ago. That famous South Down Playsand from HOME DEPOT. I introduced it to my tank about a year ago. I love it. I went deep sand bed with it. No problems at all. I recently ordered 150 lbs of similar sand from Marcorocks.com for my other tanks and to add more to my existing tank. I highly recommend this type of sand for a substrate IMO. If you are interested in that type of substrate here is the link. http://www.marcorocks.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=70
i think they both have their ups and downs. for one the berlin (barebottom) method dont look half as good, or natural as sand does. on the other hand you need alot of sand depth to promote a healthy amount of bacteria wich can be very very costly. people have said that with sand its just a matter of time till it gets chocked full of dietrus and causes a spike, with the berlin method you can siphon it up with water changes so i guess its all up to you! personally i have about 3 inches of sand and on top of the sand i have about and inch maybe 2 inches of garf grunge wich is basically rock rubble wich allows my pods and worms somewhere to breed without being eaten. really its all what you like better, seems to be no science with this stuff!
