Local sand for seeding?

[10nano]

I live like 20 mins from the gulf coast of FL. I was wondering if you could seed the "dead" aragonite that I have in the aquarium with sand from some grass flats close to shore? It is a pretty healthy area. A huge variety of fish are around or on the flats (tarpon, a few small grouper, have seen feather dusters, scallops, misc smaller fish, blue crabs and hermits.....not reef hermits though I don't think, shrimp....again not really reef shrimp, etc) I was wondering if I were to take a few lbs of the "live sand" and mix it with the aragonite would that be ok? Or do you think it would contain more harmful "critters" then good?

Any opinions?

 

[NasotheHutt]

Every time I have gone to the coast, I bring back a ziplock bag full. Has not hurt anything yet.

HTH
Scott

 

[10nano]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by NasotheHutt:
<strong>Every time I have gone to the coast, I bring back a ziplock bag full. Has not hurt anything yet.

HTH
Scott</strong><hr></blockquote>

I am assuming that since you keep doing it you get a decent amount of "detrivores" in each collection?

 

[louey louey]

Anyone collect sand right off the beach?

 

[bgdiving]

I've collected a lot of sand from off shore, it seems to work real well, but I usually collect from areas about 8 miles off shore but occasionally in a lot closer. really gets your worm population going. One batch of about 8 gallons had 3 pistal shrimp and a mantis shrimp show up in my tank, they were a little hassle to get rid of but that was the only time that happened. frequently get small black seaurchins showing up about 3 wks after adding sand to the tanks, a couple of urchins I've had in my tanks for a few years. the biggest problem I've had has been a fair number of rock or stone crabs that appear sometimes wks later and are fine when they are small but they tend to increase in size fairly rapidly as you snail and hermit population starts to vanish, and those guys are hard to get out of the tank. the crabs have been the worst problem that I've runinto. If you collect near a wreck you run a risk of picking up mettle or brass. also need to be concerned about weather red tide is present or not.

I like to collected my own sand but there are a few risks.

 

[bgdiving]

One more point - I have a pair of spawning Maroon clowns in a 20 gallon tnak with a deep sand bed that is 100% gulf collected sand.