- Hi, guys and girls, I'm ReefMan, and today
I want to talk about substrates in reef tanks.
There are three main options you have
when you're setting up a reef tank.
You can use nothing at all, just use glass on the bottom.
You can put sand on, that's probably
by far the most common is people use sand.
Or you can do something where you almost have
a empty tank bottom, but you put a cutting board in.
You can by custom size cutting boards online
and that's a great way to protect your glass.
There are pros and cons to each of these, though.
For sand, number one, it is heavy.
It's expensive, if you have to buy this stuff.
And it doesn't really provide any benefit
to your tank other than visual.
Most people don't have enough of a depth of the sand
to really get the anaerobic environment that bacteria needs
to make a deep sand bed really actually work,
so you have a sand bed, it looks great,
but you're gonna have to clean it.
And to clean it, you use these overpriced sand vacuums,
which are just acrylic tubes.
You drain water out
and get your sand clean that way.
You have to do that every time
you do your water change, let's say.
The more you feed your fish, the more junk is gonna collect
in your sand bed, and then that's just gonna rot
or decompose, and feed nutrients,
nitrates, whatever, back into your water.
So if you have a sand bed, it's important
to use a sand or gravel vac.
And if you don't have a sand bed,
you don't have to worry about that.
But you do have to worry about things falling.
So if you have live rock, which most people do
in a reef tank, and it were to fall
and hit your glass bottom of your tank,
there's a good chance that it's gonna crack it
or at least scratch it and then that's a weak spot
on the tempered glass that makes up the bottom of your tank.
So, while a bare bottom tank is nice to look at,
it's easy to clean, you just vacuum
when you do a water change, suck out whatever
has gathered down there, and easy to maintain,
it is very delicate and you have to be very careful
that your aquascape is in a very stable manner
so that it won't fall over and damage your tank.
The happy medium between the two is to use
something like cutting board material.
Obviously, this is just a cutting board.
I don't know that you'd want to use
a black cutting board, but they do come in different colors,
so feel free to enjoy your selection there.
If you search for custom cutting boards online,
there's a bunch of web sites that you can get
custom sized cutting boards from.
So you could measure the inside of your tank,
maybe measure the opening of your tank,
and then order a cutting board in whatever color you want
to cover the bottom of your tank with.
It's gonna protect the glass,
but still be easy to maintain because you won't have
the sand that you have to deal with vacuuming quite as much.
You can just suck off anything that's loose
on a cutting board.
One thing to keep in mind, though.
A lot of cutting boards have antibacterial chemicals
embedded in them, especially if you're ordering one online.
You can often just have a checkbox to say
I want this to be antibacterial cutting board.
It's great for things like chicken, things like that.
I don't know how well it actually works,
but in theory, you're cutting chicken,
there could be salmonella, who knows, it's great
to maybe have some antibacterial properties in your board.
Not so great if you're using that in your fish tank.
So if you don't want to worry about anything like that
being in the cutting board material,
there's also a material called StarBoard,
which is actually made for boats, for outdoor shelves
on boats, places where you might be cutting up fish
after you just caught them, whatever they do on boats.
(laughs) And so that's StarBoard, and you can get that,
again, in any color, any size, any thickness,
just like the cutting boards, but you won't have to worry
about the antibacterial properties
that might be in your cutting board.
So those are really the three options you have
when you're setting up a new tank.
You can go bare bottom, and worry about rocks falling.
You can go sand, and worry about having to vacuum it out
and clean it up from time to time.
Or you can go with a cutting board
and worry about having to special order a cutting board
or just cut it down to size with your own saw.
I, of course, use sand, I like the look of it.
But it is a pain to keep clean and it is a pain,
particularly in my tank because it's a large tank
and it's hard to reach all the nooks and crannies
and stuff builds up, and every time that I clean the sand,
all kinds of crud comes out of it,
so I know I should be doing it more often.
I've thought about trying bare bottom tanks.
My tank actually is made by A.G.E. and they
don't use a glass bottom, they use a PVC bottom.
So in my tank is actually a gray PVC bottom,
almost just like a cutting board, but built into the tank.
That would be a great thing to use
for just a bare bottom tank.
You don't have to worry about rocks falling, it's PVC.
It can't be broken by a rock falling.
So that's something to consider
if you're ordering a tank, but I don't think anything,
any companies that you'll find
in your normal local fish store make PVC bottoms like that.
I've only ever seen A.G.E. do that.
Yeah, I'd be very interested to know
if you have any other ideas for ways
that you can set up the bottoms of tanks.
I've seen some really awesome tanks
where they have cutting boards or just glass bottoms
and then they get some encrusting montiporas or zoanthids
or something like that growing across the bottom
and you get this nice carpet of coral.
Obviously, that's not gonna work so well on sand.
So, yeah, I'm very curious.
Let me know if you have any other ideas
on how to do a bottom of a tank.
Be curious.
See you next time, bye.