Some dumb questions

[Everton]

I've always fancied having a Marine aquarium, and out of the blue my wife has bought me a 200 litre tank with the pumps and filters etc etc.

So here goes with the questions.

We live in Israel right on the beach, so can I just take the sand & water directly from the sea? Also, we go down to Elat once a month, can I use pieces of broken coral that I can snorkel for?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

 

[shabash]

I can tell you from experience when we lived in south florida that yes you can do that and be fine. Others will tell you that you may introduce "things" that you will regret later on. I guess we were just lucky because we never got anything that harmed our tank, if anything we got lucky and introduced lots of critters that our fish ate and cleaned our tank (crabs,worms) but there are somethings that you cannot see that can cause problems. As far as rubble or broken coral, if you are talking about live animals you are very lucky if you can do that but again you can get some hitchhikers so do so at your own risk. In florida you cannot do that so all we ever got was sand and rock and the occasional fish we found in seaweed but if we were ever caught we may have faced fines.
Any fish we were able to get home we always quarantined for a minimum of 10days before introducing to our display and you may want to do the same with anything else you acquire, live rock included.

 

[Everton]

Thanks for the reply.

Since the initial post I've managed to find a really good supplier, and also met a fellow enthusiast who invited me to his house to look at his set up. Quite impressive.

I've also found out that it is also illegal here to take anything from the reefs around Elat, but as long as you are not actually damaging the reef, ie, hacking pieces off it, your OK to take small pieces that are laying around on the sea bed.

I also see people fishing down there quite a lot, so I'm thinking that I will set up the tank to reflect the Red Sea, and also try to catch my own fish.