switching to sand, ugf plate?

cmar

cmar

AC Members
May 18, 2007
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switching from cc to sand substrate...just wondering if i should leave ugf grid under sand? i have always used it,( w/o the ug filter), with one riser tube in place. i stick my syphon hose down the riser tube and suck out all the really dirty water from under the plate. good idea or bad? (new to sw, worked well on fw).
is there any benefit to having my sand raised by the grate?

thanks!
 
throw it out. The sand would fall right into the crevices anyway. UGF store a lot of wastes that cause nitrate buildup. It would be next to impossible to clean it out. A sand bed, or better yet a deep sand bed, is a 1000% improvement from cc, I had to make the switch in my 75g and that was not a fun weekend.
 
UGFs no longer have much of a place in the marine hobby, especially in a reef tank. When you switch to sand, take out the UGF.

What you're saying might work well for fw (even though I despise UGF in my fw tanks), but a marine sand bed can be a functioning bio-filter itself in the case of a deep sand bed (generally 4"+) and not just an alternative to cc.
 
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