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Post by industry on Dec 3, 2012 21:31:31 GMT -5
How deep is everyone running their sand beds?
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Post by ryansweatt2004 on Dec 3, 2012 21:41:12 GMT -5
I had about 4.5 inches when I used a deep sand bed. About 3.5-4 inches of sugar fine sand and close to an inch of coarse sand on top. It worked well as long as I kept it maintained. Now I have about 1.5 inches of coarse sand and I like it a lot more. The three ways of really doing it are either having no sand, "bare bottom" having 1/2 - 2 inches of coarse sand "shallow sandbed" or 4-6 inches of layered sand "deep sand bed". They each work very well and all have their pros and cons. Deciding whats going to work best for your tank is the hard part.
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Post by gotareef on Dec 3, 2012 23:31:01 GMT -5
mine is around 3"-4" the fine sand settles and I vaccume the top 1/2" in spots when doing a water change
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Post by industry on Dec 4, 2012 6:59:14 GMT -5
my plan is to run a refugeium, and maybe an algae scrubber. What sort of maintenance is involved in a deep sand bed?
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Post by ryansweatt2004 on Dec 4, 2012 10:03:57 GMT -5
Depending on how you setup your system, any sand bed can become saturated with waste in a short time if your tank doesn't have proper flow to keep detritus suspended long enough to make it to the skimmer and refugium. Almost everyone is going to say "never disturb a deep sand bed". Most deep sand beds I've ever had or had to work around, if you disturb the surface layer of sand you get a brown cloud of detritus that gets released into the tank and a spike in nitrates or phosphates. Vacuuming the top layer of a deep sand bed really helps keep the nitrates and phosphates in check. Now that I've got a big skimmer and a refugium, I had no need for a deep sand bed and completely removed mine.
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Post by industry on Dec 4, 2012 11:57:05 GMT -5
Is fine sand ok for a 1-2" sand bed? My tank is only 22" tall, so if shallow sand is not a ton more work I would like to keep as much height for swimming/growing room as possible.
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Post by spotfin on Dec 4, 2012 12:49:23 GMT -5
My sandbed is 1-1.5" of fine sand.
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Post by seamonkey84 on Dec 4, 2012 12:52:27 GMT -5
I always recommend keeping the sandbed either 1" or less if the tank is under 60 gallons (any smaller and there won't be enough microfauna to maintain the sand), or at least 4 inches for a DSB in a bigger tank. Anything between 1-4 inches is going to just act as a hard to clean detritus trap.
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Post by industry on Dec 4, 2012 14:15:06 GMT -5
What do you recommend for a 125g tank. I'm picking up 40(I think) pounds of fine sand from a member here. Also getting some base rock. Do I need a deep sand bed, or is there less maintenance with a shallow bed? I don't really like the look of bare bottom tanks.
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Post by ryansweatt2004 on Dec 4, 2012 14:41:38 GMT -5
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