Real Beach Sand/Rock for New Setup?

[scuba_pr]

I was wandering if real Caribbean beach sand and rocks are good for new SW aquarium setups. I have more than 7 years of experience with FW aquariums, in fact I was able to bread Red Caps Orandas in my 55 gallon aquarium. But since I live in Puerto Rico ?Tropical Island?, and I practice SCUBA diving very often, in Caribbean waters, for almost 1 year now; that?s drives me to have my own reef setup. After a lot of research and reading on setups, filters, and DIY articles; I?m now in the designing stages of my new SW aquarium. I will start to build my W/D filter next week with a 10g aquarium, also will use 2 power heads with sponge filters for water movement and water clearing, and a Marineland 300 with 2 biowheels for increased mechanical filtration. Although I dive very often I will not collect live corals, fish or rocks from the diving sites, instead I expect to collect just 4-6 small fishes and maybe some invertebrates (eels, urchins, starfish, shrimps) from the beaches around, some hermit crabs (lot of them around), and grown my own corals from the rocks collected. On the fish compatibility area I will do more research before put them in my setup. But the main question is if it?s good to use real beach sand and rocks in a SW reef aquarium setup?
Any comments or suggestions will be really appreciated.

 

[broomer5]

Well most of us mainlanders would probably suggest never to use beach sand or things collected from the sea.
But .....
Man if I were you, and was able to dive in the same waters where many of our fish and corals naturally grow ... wow! That alone would be rush !!!
I will still recommend not collecting things from the sea yourself,
But ..... LOL Man if it were me, and I checked out the local laws regarding removing things from the ocean ... and it was allowed.
I would almost have to try it.
Imagine a few buckets of off shore live sand collected from the base of a huge coral reef to start your tank with.
Talk about little die off.
Live rock may be a different story, but I don't know ... sure would be tempting.
I'm not suggesting you do it
All I am saying is that if I was in your fins - and I knew it was legal, prepared myself for the unknown and knew up front that there may be some complications .....
I'd go for it.

 

[iswimwithmyfish]

i don't know... the carribean is thought as a very clean environment... are there any boats or ships that go through the area? If not, it sounds very pleasing to just take some... <img src="graemlins//confused.gif" border="0" alt="[confused]" />

 

[info_sponge]

I wouldn't grab beach sand as it might be contaminated, but if it was legal, id grab some buckets and go diving

 

[fshhub]

i agree so far, especially with the fact tha ti would go off shore(where ther are likely less pollutants)
but back to your post, you are going into too much,
the powerheads alone will be plenty, no filter sponges required, the lr and sand will do abetter job, with less complications and work(changing and cleaning)
teh wet dry is a thing of the past in marine aquariums, it is not thought to be as great as previously thought, in fact, it may pose to be more of a problem for nitrate, i would use the tank as a sump alone, with maybe a dsb in it too, and a lil lr, that is it
and maybe a protein skimmer
HTH and welcome aboard, you are gonna love this hobby