Wolf let me let you in on a secret....shhhhhhhhhhhhhh....don't tell anyone....But I did what you are inquiring about...I was just starting out and I went to the beach on Pensacola when I was visiting my in laws and guess what.....scooped me about 65 lbs of sand put it in a clean cooler with some of the beach water and hauled it off back to Kansas City. Ran with that in my 42 gallon....thinking I had a fairly successful tank....Boy was I wrong. The problems didn't show up immediately, but about 6 months into it for absolutely no reason at all, my levels went out the roof, in a matter of 4 days, I had lost EVERYTHING in my tank...including some damsels (and these seeds of satan survive everything...they are like cockroaches ha ha ha ha)...don't know if if the sand was the reason, but it really was a pain in the a********** couldn't keep it clean, new crap that I thought I had cleaned out of it kept surfacing....think I found a bottle with a note in there **send help, please*** once...LOL..
Then come to find out, I had read on this site in several places, it is illegal to take sand from the beach in Florida...now I am going to be on America's most wanted for taking some sand...So I did what any rational person would do....disposed of the sand to get rid of any evidence...
No your honor, that was not me on the day in question on the Pensacola Beach!
But in my opinion, I would not take sand from the beach and place it in your tank....like someone put it in one of the forums on this site....(not verbatum, but in generalization) Look at your skimmer...all the bubbles that rise to the top and the nasty skimmate that is left over in the collection cup......well the beach is the oceans collection cup with all of the oceans waste and bi-products....
