Substrate in a sump/fuge?

[jef4y]

What says ye? Do you have substrate in your sump or fuge?

I have a sump that I grow chaeto in, but also have rock & a few inches of sand. It's been this way since I first started several years ago.

I am considering removing the sand when we do the tank upgrade. My reasons are:

1 - I'd like the extra water space
2 - I'm afraid the sand will get blown around with flows that will be dramatically more than what I have right now.
3 - I'm worried that the sand may become toxic & cause problems after time due to the amount of detritus in it and nothing but pods & a few bristle worms there to clean it up.

 

[johniii]

My fuge has no substrate so I can just vacuum out the detrius without wasting sand. If I did have substrate there would be a cuc in there

 

[butch]

JeF4y;766359 wrote: I have a sump that I grow chaeto in, but also have rock & a few inches of sand.

X2. Mine has been running this way for about 9 months.

 

[gnashty]

Butch;766497 wrote: X2. Mine has been running this way for about 9 months.

X3, 16 months

 

[ralph atl]

No sand, no rock, no macro....

Nothing to collect detritus, I just vacuum out once a week to ten days with water change.
Ditched fuge, plenty of pods and stuff without it....macro never grew quick enough to dent phates and trates anyhow.

 

[ripped tide]

I Have a layer of matrix above a layer of crushed coral and a floating basket that has mangroves growing in it.

 

[jef4y]

Matrix would be an interesting addition/replacement for the rock AND the sand that's in there. hmmm...

 

[ripped tide]

I have a thread about it. I'll post some picks of my origional set up, and how it has evolved.

 

[ripped tide]

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[jef4y]

Nice! I don't know that I'd drop the matrix on the crushed coral as that would end up with some serious cleaning requirements, but an inch or matrix might be a suitable approach.

Very interesting...

 

[falos]

You can allways make large rocks out of pond matrix and supperglue that way you can just pull them out and vacuum the sand