With sufficient flow and livestock to clean the sand that's maintenance right there.

When I first got into the hobby I was told in no uncertain terms by several reefers that I had to mIntain my sandbed with frequent cleaning. I however listened to the advice of 2 local long time reefers which is las long as you have good water flow and a cleanup crew you will not have to deal with sand cleaning.

Ultimately the choice is yours you have to decide and if you want to clean it great if you let the inhabitants maintain it great the choice is not ours to make. We can only suggest what has worked for us in the past I steadfastly refuse to listen to people who say that you have to do it this or that way.

I use a eheim vacuum and go over the sandbed on my non wc week (biweekly). I have lots of snails, 2 abalones and close to a dozen conches as cuc but they do not make the detritus disappear so vacuuming helps a lot.

Guess I fall under the category of cleaning lady with my giant vacuum and spatula destroying the entire ecosystem and biological diversity of my tank while making my tanks filtration suffer.

What do you think is in your sand bed that you don't already have in your live rock? Why is actively removing debris from a closed system destroying an ecosystem and why should my filtration be negatively affected from doing so? Is my tank then less capable of processing and filtering then yours is? Is my cleaning lady approach setting my tank up for failure and yours has a far greater chance for success because you keep this "vital and unique" ecosystem intact?

How is the filtration effected? Why should I not clean my sand on a regular bases? And why should I only do so when my tank is experiencing problems as you suggested? Why is doing it then a good idea and not the rest of the time? And what problems actually constitute an appropriate time to do and why does that problem lead you to believe you in fact should be cleaning your sand bed?

So should I get on board with you and put this to rest because us crazy sand cleaning people need to know the facts and that the notion of actively remove debris from our systems via maintaining the sand bed is just silly and if doing so where are actually just tyrants of our ecosystem and creating shortcomings for our tanks filtering and processing capabilities?

I don't care if you don't want to flush that toilet you call a sand bed by actually maintaining it but i don't think its appropriate to label those of us out there who do as "this group", "these clean freaks" and try to imply we are doing something wrong and you need to create some thread to out it all to rest so we finally get it! I would hate for a new person in the hobby to read your post and come to the conclusion they should not be cleaning and maintaing there sand

lol

Tear down that tank and remove the egg crate...I know you want to!

Aquariums sand beds and natural ecosystems are like comparing a picture of New York City to the real thing. They're imperfect recreations and expecting them to operate like the ocean is, at best, a joke.

Keep your sand bed shallow and clean it often. Five minutes of gravel vacuuming > a year's worth of cleanup crew activity.

Here is a pic of 50g water siphoned to remove a third of my 1.5" sand bed after 3 years.

http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/d...ps9b2c5743.jpg

i turkey baste my sandbed every couple days to get all the crud into the water column and hopefully out of the display. prob only 10% does before it settles again but the corals love it. i'm going back to sucking stuff out weekly again as well.

Ewe!

We should ask that pail full of crap wether it thinks we should be maintaining our sand beds. That ecosystem looks so biologically diverse that I wouldn't be surprised if it actually could answer back.