quick question?

[hawk70]

Everyone talks about the importance of ls, I have an uncle who lives in FL and was wondering if i could just ask him to go down to the ocean, climb into the water and bag up a couple hundred pounds of good ol' FL sand for me... Would this be just as good as any ls that you would buy from a store? Thanks for your time.

 

[bdhough]

Thats fine but it might be illegal. They have ways of catching you. Don't ask me how....

 

[dacia]

It is my understanding that this would be like buying Southdown rather than LS. I could be wrong, though, but to get real LS wouldn't you have to dig it up from the bottom of the ocean (under the water, not on the beach)?

 

[hawk70]

Illigal? Going 5mph over the speed limit is illigal.... Is it that serious of a crime?

 

[dacia]

A long time ago (back in the early 80s anyway) my family went to Cape Hatteras like usual. There was another family there from Ohio. Sharon (the mother and wife) packed up a couple hundred pounds of sand from the beach for a sandbox for her kids. It wasn't illegal (or at least they didn't get caught taking the sand) but I did hear a funny story about how George couldn't see the road while driving at night, stopped the van to clean off his headlights, then was a tad irritated to learn that they had travelled a quarter of the way across the country weighted down by sand... We all still laugh about that.

 

[bdhough]

Well live sand is just like live rock. Over time it grows its own life just like live rock. You really don't need to buy "premade" live sand since if you are going to stock the tank with live rock anyways it will just spread down into the sand after a couple months. I mean think of each grain of sand as a mini piece of live rock. Any beneficial bacteria will adhere to a surface and if you were to look at live rock under a microscope you'de see tons of mini caves and such.

 

[bdhough]

I don't know if its illegal or not. I do know florida has laws protecting its reefs i don't know if that extends to the beah or not. I assume it does. I would make sure its not before doing it.

 

[escape2thewater]

I live in FL too, but due to possible pollutants in the sand, I chose to buy arragonite. Believe me, I would have saved a ton of money and time but I didn't want to take any chances. I have way too much $$$ in my tank to try to shortcut something that I might be sorry for later.Just MHO.
Kyle

 

[bdhough]

I understand that argument but if you are setting up the tank initially those pollutants will get taken care of in the cycle. Now if its hard metals like copper or something like that then that is always an issue and another story all together.