sand from beach

good to know this. i didnt think about contaminents from humans and animals. i wouldnt want a beer can in my tank lol

 

No, live sand is the sand that coral would live on. "Live" has micro organisms & beneficial bacteria in it. There is dry live sand, that once water is added it comes alive, but does tank longer, rather than just buying live sand.

 

Dingo is right, almost every coastal state it is illegal to take sand. Let's think about this. If our coasts are constantly eroding & being fixed, what the heck would happen if people took it too...

 

besides, you're better off taking dump in your tank and using that as substrate. They way we pollute our water and beaches...

 

Good points, also remember you want agragonite sand which is formed primarily by parrotfish pooping out bits of coral reef and is usually found at or close to reefs.

Many depositional beaches are composed of a mixture of erosional sands that contain silicate or other unwanted minerals.


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I live in FL and was thinking of using live sand from the beach but not only is it borderline illegal (I've been seeing them spend millions all my life dredging the sand back to the beachfront) but also as another poster mentioned there are pollutants that the ocean can absorb but in a small tank they will be concentrated; and finally not all beach sand is aragonite; I live by Siesta Key which has the whitest sugar sand anywhere but it's quartz (I think there's a big crystal deposit off the coast or something.) I bought caribsea, I know it's probably from some quarry here in FL but it was a lot more convenient than trying to figure out if what I'm finding is the right stuff. On a side note, I thought the same thing about rock since we are sitting on a limestone bed here, down the street is a limestone rock source where people look for fossils but that limestone has phosphate or something like that in it, something I remember that you don't want in a tank, and sure I could back behind my Mom's place and grab some rocks from the brackish water but it'll be full of aggressive shrimp and stone crabs etc. The only thing I might use from the ocean is mangrove seeds.