Sand or Not to Sand

If you are going with a deep sand bed, you will want small/oolite sand. With a regular sandbed, my preference is Caribsea's Special Grade :0) Here's a link:

http://www.caribsea.com/caribsea/itempage_marine_substrates_aragonite.html

 

That's always a discussion up for debate. You of course have a number of options. If you want to start low you can go bare bottom (bb) from there for cheap and fine grade you can go with silica sand, quick Crete makes some for super cheap. Forma larger grain pool filter sand will work. At this level you will be saving a good bit of money but losing some benefits like the ability for your substrate to buffer ph. Silica has been anecdotally linked to issues with sand sifting fish along with issues with issues like silica leaching. The later is nonsense and any one who says otherwise has no idea what they are talking about and basing their opinion on internet anecdotal research.
From here you step up To crushed coral With crushed Coral you gain the ability to buffer PH. With the benefit that Calcium Carbinate adds the cost difference in my opinion is Certainly worth it. there are of course grades here as well. 00lite, argonite, and So forth. Aragonite comes in Sizes from sugar all the way up to large chunk grades. Ultimately the choice is yours & depends on what you wont your tank to Look Like. There are VERY Little corals that require Sand or substrate. If anything certain Inverts of fish will require it.
In the end your decision will result in different needs of Maintenance & care On your part. The good news is you can Certainly start BB & work on up!

 

another thing to consider is what you will be wanting to keep in the reef. smaller fine sands will blow around quite a bit if you are going to have high amounts of flow for sps etc, the special grade aragonite will stay put better than a sugar sand/fine sand but can still move some. Crushed coral will stay put but accumilate(sp) a greater amount of detrius (poop,etc).

I have used the quikcrete fine sand-white looks like a tropical beach-blue on package, (the standard playsand with red packaging-looks like inland beach sand with small pebbles-still looks good but brown in color) in multiple tanks and it does work quite nicely, nice n white. Very cheap compared to aragonite sand, $4 for 50lbs. Works great as a substrate, but, you want to rinse it VERY good multiple times before using it, its very dusty. The silica dust helps fuel diatom blooms and if using silica sand you will inevitably have a diatom bloom in the beginning moreso than with aragonite sand. It does pass tho and afterwords and wont leach silica as its inert and makes a good looking sandbed for cheap, but if going with high flow you will end up with sand dunes (which kinda looks cool, but gets irratating smoothing them out frequently)

i have fine quickcrete sand in two tanks and carib special grade in two others, both look good, ones just way less expensive than the other lol

It does just depend on budget, personal taste, and amount of flow you will have

 

I've also seen people epoxy dry sand to the bottom before starting the system. It makes the tank look like it's got sand but the functionality of bare bottom. I'm sure it would eventually get covered with coralline, but it's an idea. I've had systems with both and I think with sand is more natural looking.

 

Bare bottom is awesome...Never been happier.....

 

I have 2 systems running. One of each. I think Sand looks better in the display, but BB is nice because you can actually see what needs to be cleaned and you don't have to worry about disrupting the sand bed while doing maintance. Also if you have an acrylic tank, the likelihood of scratching it is much lower without sand.

If you plan on having fish, I believe many wrasses and gobis need a sand.

Both have benefits and drawbacks.

 

Huge fan of bare bottom tanks. At some point in time reefers got in our mind that reef tanks are suppose to have sand to look "natural" even though the large coral reefs don't have sand at all! Well most of the large reefs at least. I like to put a few smaller rocks on the bottom to break up the flat plane of the bottom but still have the benefits of BB. After my smaller tank started having nutrient problems I traced it to the sand bed, in a nano you can't really clean it well, and after seeing how NASTY the sand was I doubt I will ever have sand again, at least not more than a light dusting. I do keep a small bowl of sand for my clam to set in, he doesn't like BB, but that is it.


And according to Randy Holmes, THE reef chemist in my opinion, calcium based sand really don't buffer a reef tank to any significant effect anyway unless your parameters are out of whack so no reason to spend the $$ on it.


http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1987490&highlight=buffer+sand

 

I painted the bottom. On the outside of course, but used a textured grey/slate followed with black when it dried. Worked great.

 

I bet that looks pretty sweet