wild live sand

[davejnz]

I live in Daytoina Beach,FL and have acess to the beaches and ocean.I have read about supplementing DSB's with wild live sand
Can this sand be used?

[BZip]

I'll try and add a little, others will probably know more.

I used to live a couple hours south of you in Melbourne and I did know someone who kept a tank with ONLY real sand and saltwater right from the local beach and his tank did ok. However, I have heard people say that the sand is not that great because of all that tar that washes up on your beaches down there.


I have a question to add if you don't mind. I know it's illegal to take any kind of rock or coral from the ocean. However, near Melbourne during really low tides, there are many loose pieces of rock with coraline algae and other growth on them. As long as it's washed up or loose, is it ok to take? I would never do it considering I live in Ohio now, but I've always been curious.

[davejnz]

I think it's only illegal in south florida and the keys where the reefs are.BTW tar isn't really a problem cause their are many places on the beach where driving isn't permitted and the sand is quite clean.Their are a couple of lfs here that use 100% ocean
water and their SPS displays are awesome.

[PRC]

This is from the Reeferrocks website at http://www.reeferrocks.com/liverock/history.htm

Wild live rock collection is banned in the Gulf and South Atlantic Economic Exclusion Zones (EEZ), Caribbean (EEZ), Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, North Carolina, Western Pacific, California, Hawaii, and Guam.

Basically anywhere where you'd want to collect LR from.

I believe collecting sand from the beach is probably illegal as well. The tar that is typically found in beach sand does not come from vehicles driving on the beach but rather washes up from offshore sources like tankers and offshore oil rigs. There's plenty of the stuff on the beaches of Miami and Southern California where the only vehicle traffic is the beach patrol.
Most beach sand is silica sand which, from what I gather, is not all as terrible in a reef tank as some would have you believe. Silica sand does not, however, provide any of the buffering advantages of aragonite.
For some good LS try contacting other local reefers or one of the Live Rock aquaculturists in the Tampa area (Tampa Bay Saltwater, GulfView or ReeferRocks are the ones I'm aware of) they collect sand from far offshore where you don't have to worry as much about getting bottle caps and cigarette butts.

[rshimek]

Hi,

Wild collected sand from tropical areas is generally fine for tanks, however, as has been indicated, ([thanks]) such collection may be illegal. Check with your local state conservation authorities and make sure that it legal to do so prior to any collection.

If you do a search of this forum using "sand" and "collection" as your keys, you should find several threads discussing how to do such collecting, as well as hints for transporting the sand after collection.

:D