Who runs a successful acropora only tank using either bare bottom or sand bottom.

[acropora4u]

I have been running bear bottom for the last three years but now I’m thinking about putting a sand bottom. it is a high flow aquarium.

For those that have a sand bottom how deep is it and do you have a lot of flow or not?

 

[Reefing102]

Not Acro only, but mostly Acro with some LPS and a couple softies. I have about a 1.5inch sand bed. I just used a larger grain but I’m running about 40-60x flow overall

 

[acropora4u]

Not Acro only, but mostly Acro with some LPS and a couple softies. I have about a 1.5inch sand bed. I just used a larger grain but I’m running about 40-60x flow overall

What sand are you running exactly

 

[VintageReefer]

I did replace pumps with dual mp40’s

Once your sand bed is established it doesn’t blow around as much.

My current reef is Lps dominant and I can turn my return pump to 100; and mp 10 and mp40 both to 100, and I get minimal sand bed disturbance.

 

[acropora4u]

I have four MP 60s on a 60 inch long tank

 

[Reefing102]

What sand are you running exactly

It’s Caribsea special grade.

I run a Jebao rw-8 (full power), slw 20 (full power), slw 30 (there’s no percentages but I’d guess about 80% based on the dots on the controller) and scp 90 (about 70%, again based on the dots).

 

[C. Eymann]

Personally, I ditched using sandbeds in 2003/4 once I got really serious about focusing on Acropora dominant tanks. Many find success with SPS + sandbed but it can mean more maintenance and running into issues a few years later if maintenance is not kept up with, where BB tanks are much easier to keep clean and do maintenance on IMO.

When I first started at my current position in aquaculture, I persistently tried convincing the "powers at be" to start doing two things, start using kalkwasser and more importantly to start ditching the sandbeds in some of the older multi tank systems, the latter took a few years of lot more convincing, however,
because of having so much on our plates with expansion, building new systems and upkeep on other systems etc etc caused us to sometimes fall behind ensuring these sandbeds were well stocked with detritivores / long periods of time not occasionally vacuuming snall sections of them at a time- two things that I believe are paramount to having long term success with reef aquariums with sandbeds.
One of the older 5 tank + sump 1050gal SPS systems with 2 of the tanks having 2-2.5in sandbeds was running into some issues with debersia algea, slower growth, not optimal color etc etc and I purposed to overhaul/ remove the sand beds one tank at a time / several weeks between each removal for stability concerns, upon removal, we discovered many sections of the sand had become compacted and the presence of odors of hydrogen sulfide meant some of these areas became anoxic/ hypoxic. The months after removal, ORP levels trended up, algea issue became more manageable and things really started to thrive again.
Thus, we are now in the process of slowly removing sand from a lot of our systems.

Now if I can only convince "the powers at be" to stop using filter socks 24/7 - and to rely more on aggressive skimming only......