Bare bottom questions

[mechfish]

i have a 75 gallon with about 1 inch of live sand and live rock.I have been having a lot of problems with alge lately.Right know im fighting red slime alge because i moved some rocks around a couple of weeks ago and really stirred things up.I have been reading about the barebottom tanks lately and i am woundering if that would solve my problems.when my sand gets stirred up there is a yellow/brown cloud that comes out of it(that cant be good).I have a question about cooking rocks also,do you need to use ro water in all of those dipping buckets or is tap water ok?And also i would assume going BB would mean getting rid of the fuge i just put in?This is just something im thinking about im not ready to do it yet its pretty drastic and a lot of work and i really like to have sand in my tank.

Just looking for some opnions on my tank and reasons why others have gone BB?

[REEF-DADDY]

First and foremost read SEANT's sticky's , and when you finish read them again. I did use R/O water, you never know whats in your tap water and the idea is to get Phosphate out, not put it in. I had horrible algea problems in DSB tank, no matter what I did. Since going to barebottom they have gone away. To me SSB is the worst way to go. A DSB will break down or absorb nutrients to a certain extent, BB make its easier to get them out. To me a SSB just traps them, and you really can't have alot of the animals that make a DSB work. Just my .02

[mechfish]

what is a SSB?? Was it a big project to convert to a BB??

[concept3]

SSB shallow sand bed.
IMO, anything less than 1-2 inches of fine sand. It would be safer to use RO/DI with your newly made saltwater dip and swish buckets, reefdaddy is right, the point is making the rocks LEACH out all that nasty stuff OUT. Think of difussion. The more concentrated solution goes to the lesser concentrated solution until equalized. the more you do it, the more you leach out.

[mechfish]

thanks.still got a lot of thinking to do before i decide to go BB

[concept3]

The easiest way to go from SSB to BB would be to siphon the sand weekly a little at a time, but you would need to do quite a few water changes while your tank matures further and exhausts its nitrogenous and phosphate supplies (in the rocks). A friend did his this way, and it took him 4 months to clear his jungle of a hair algae tank to completely algae free.... he wishes he did it when I recommended it. He doesn't mind the Bare bottom look now since he looks at his corals more than he did his algae covered sand and rocks.

The second way is to completely break down all your rock and "cook" them while you keep your corals/fish/inverts safely in the tank. This would be the most efficient way of doing it, if it was me, it would be an opportunity for a tank upgrade, a closed loop, etc. etc.
I was fortunate enough that I did not have the need to cook my rocks (from my 55 gallon to my 75 gallon Reef ready tank last year), since I've been Barebottom since High School (and that was since 1995!!!)

[mechfish]

how do i know if i need to cook my rocks???????

[concept3]

it's a personal decision if you want to cook your rocks. I haven't personally done it, but I did remove my rocks and dunked and swished them 2X when I did a tank transfer. Cooking involves a lot of patience and in my opinion needs to be done if one has a HUGE or uncontrollable proliferation of Hair or nuisance algae.

you can always try the siphoning approach to remove your SSB, and see how your tank progresses from there. I've had DSB, SSB, undergravel filters w/crushed coral and everything in between; I believe BB has to be the easiest approach to husbandry (although I miss the look of white sands in the bottom of the tank, which eventually turns into anything but white in a matter of weeks/months)

[REEF-DADDY]

Just be warned if you don't cook them, it will make more work on your part when it comes to maintenance. I cooked about 1/2 my rock and get alot of detrius in my sump. Take a look at my sump thread

[Orion76]

If you decide to convert to BB and decide not to cook your rocks then I would strongly urge you to at least remove every rock from your display and give it a very good rinsing, and then rebuild your rock structure as open as possible.

Simply siphoning out the sand can lead to disastrous algae problems if your rock structure is tightly packed with lots of detritus trapped in between it. You won't believe how much crap is really trapped in between your rocks until you tear down your aquascape, at least that was my experience

IMO a DSB *is* an effective biological filter and can be more forgiving to badly built rockscapes for the first few years than a BB tank so IMO it is very important to evaluate your current system and eliminate any existing pockets of detritus and prevent any possible future detritus traps.

I think for many tanks simply siphoning out the sand will only worsen the problems that made you want to convert to BB in the first place

[HFG]

Originally Posted by mechfish

how do i know if i need to cook my rocks???????

Its unlikely you could have rocks that don't need cooking.

leave the rocks for a while without light and you will know when it is done cooking when they stop shedding detrius. Base rocks will take longer to get started, and will take longer to cook as they are full of sediment (unless they are man made... and thats a whole nother issue ).