[Cougra]

I currently have a sandbed that's about 3 inches deep in my tank. I just added the southdown a few weeks ago because I felt my tank was in the process of crashing: uncontrolable algae problems, nitrates levels were climbing and animals started to react differently then normal. I had oringinally set the tank up with a 1 inch layer of large crushed coral and as it slowly desolved I would add more CC.

I think I have a medium size bioload for the size of tank that I have with 4 smallish fish (2 A. ocellaris, 1 royal gramma, 1 lawnmower blenny) and a lot of crabs.

When I do a water change, I do a light vaccuming of the top of the sand without disturbing the sand too much. I feed a pinch of food twice a day: once in the morning and once at night.

Even with the debats going on about sand beds being time bombs and with the risk of having to redo my tank agian in another 4 to 5 years, I still felt that in my system the benifits and nitrogen reducing ability of the sand bed will outway the risks.

I think we learn more about the way these systems work, we'll be better prepared to deal with the problems when the time comes.

When I set this up, I planned change out part of the sandbed each year to export some of the detrious buildup, provide new area for infauna to spread to, and prevent major clumping of the entire bed. I will also be occasionally purchasing new rocks on occassion to help provide some biodiversity in the tank and introduce new genetic streams into the system so that my critters can reproduce healthy offspring. (Would get some detrivour kits if they were more readily available.)

I figured that I'm willing to spend money on upgrading tank size or lighting or getting new fish, inverts or corals, why not spend some money on maintaining good filtration system?