MadReefist
New member
Hello I hope to hear from people who have actually treied using sand from the ocean / gulf / etc. After a 6 year hiatus from the hobby I intend to do a pretty big multi-tank setup and aren't trying to pay 'thousands' of dollars for sand (and rock).
Or course true live rock is completely illegal to collect (and not even available near shore anyways), but the marine collection guidelines for Florida make no mention of sand (which is infinite compared to the hobby especially compared to commercial fishing and the demand there).
Now for me the logic is quite simple: maxiumum biological diversity is the maximum environment. Within reason of course, as in people obsessed with eating organic anything swearing by the concept of 'organics' despite the fact that many of the most toxic and deadly substances on earth come from nature. Or how too much water will kill a plant (that REQUIRES water to exist).
Now I get the concept that there can be parasites or other hitchikers that are undesireable.
Getting back to the true thread topic however, in my own experience of years of marine aquaria where I'm at in Tampa, for about 4-5 years, after moving here from Michigan where I started in the hobby (and learned most of the core screwup lessons such as overfeeding etc)... despite the warnings I ALWAYS added pretty much everything I could that had any sort of place in my tank. And yes, without quarantining.
This went from everything from all sorts of odd invertebraes, various rock chunks that had cool things like barnacles on them, scoops of sand from virtually every locale I happened to visit from Tampa to Ft Myers to the Keys, fish even ogly ones during my first stretch here when I was broke, etc.
Eventually only store type fish ever made it into my tank, but there were plenty of creepy crawlies from the store, and the locale. Thinking back the only real losses I had were things such as filter feeding oysters or such I lacked the system to support.
As far as algae problems, in hindsight they did exist during a long period but the last roughly 2 years that all ended. My last tank had been a 4'x2'x2' tank, with huge surface area. I would generally go to the trouble to go to the grocery store and get RO water, but going to school everynight while working full time in those days... my biggest menace was evaporation. The thing had to have been going down 2-4" a week. In a 120 gallon that was a big problem in making sure tap water never went in. The thing was, the lower it would get the faster it would evaporate.
But eventually I was able to afford an RO system built into the stand (thank ebay), an auto-topoff-system, and proper glass lids.
After this all of my problems went away: hassles trying to keep the levels up with proper water, undesireable algae blooms, etc. I dont recall losing any store fish during any of this, but they were definitely happier. I even had one that I didn't notice until intense observation once I got it home... it had ick that I didnt notice at the store. I was freaked, but decided to play my luck as destroying the tank to catch one fish seemed like worse than the solution. In those days I was able to scrape by to get my ideal DT, and maintain it within reason, but the extra burden of 'proper' quaratining was a major burden.
Anyways, that fish got perfectly healthy after a couple weeks, none of the others got sick. I attributed it to the in system RO upgrade specifically. I didn't get out of the hobby from any problems from semi-regularly adding locally collected whatever, instead after moving 3 times in a few months after trying to move in with a chick who got all crazy, blah, moving 120 gallons breaks you. The fish store that was supposed to take care of my fish for a couple weeks while I moved sold them on me, whatever.
My favorite fish of them was one my good friend caught by hand while out fishing in Tampa Bay. It was 'green worm eel' that the LFS guy sold without even being able to identify it. I didnt even know what it truly was, then, I could never find anything on google by trying to describe it. It was about a foot long, lived a good 2+ years old under my care, tunneled all under the substrate, non-aggressive, RARE, COOL. My friend brought him over and dropped him 'right in' (acclimation of course) and he disappeared for a long period of months but one day jetted out of nowhere and scared everyone. No quarantine, I didn't have a place to do it, and he needed to get into the water.
My filtration from the start moving down here was primarily 3 Magnum filter canisters, and some BS minor filters as backups. The Magnums I kept daisy chained. One was the micron filter element I kept charged with diatomaceous earth, next was the proper carbon chamber, and the last was filled with those hollow clay bio pellet things. Also in them was this filter pouch thing I had forever that had this odd micro BB shaped media in it that it claimed was to remove heavy metals, which I could recharge I think by boiling. But eventually was able to afford a good wet/dry sump w/ built in skimmer, and I had other things I had built such as a 4' tall fluidized sand filter made from 4" schedule 80 PVC I salvaged from a construction site. It was hell tuning that thing to work right without being able to see inside it but I eventually did.
The only thing I really had left on my list was a refugium sump. But I saw the others as more important in providing the fish life support, the refugium was the final step before I'd buy actual coral pieces and anenomes.
Without the refugium I will say that I was able to buy random pieces of liverock here and there (which was actually the point, in providing maximum diversity)... which finally climaxed with only buying from Tampa Bay Saltwater (when they still had their walkin location)... This rock was breathtaking in my experience. When I left Michigan in 2001 there were stores charging upwards to $15 per lb. (literally) for Fiji rock that WAS purple, but had NOTHING on this rock. The life that poured out of this rock only spread onto and into everything else.
Despite my (in hindsight) overall lackluster filtration versus adding in random locally collected sand and bits and creatures, for the better part of the run, not one store bought fish 'ate it'. Nothing did, that I can recall which wasn't some specialty oddity which would only be inherently fed in the same manner as coral.
NOW... I didn't ever have a refugium built completely out of local salty sand. Nor did I have a "DSB" built from such. I had about a couple inches across the bottom of the tank that built up over time.
PARASITES never destroyed my tank.
NOR did polutants ever cause harm that I can see in hindsight.
HOWEVER, in comtemplating using deep sand elements and lots of sand segments, and perhaps some layers of "mud" harvested semi-near mangrove areas, in particular are of my concern ARE would-be pollutants.
BUT in general I'm anxious to hear from others who have had direct experience with locally collected salty substrates. If you've had a bad experience, are you sure you used RO water only to top it off?
Thinking back, topping the damn thing off all the time before I had built in RO ended up meaning few actual water changes (whatsoever), in just trying to keep it full (which wasn't always RO water even, it was such a hassle).
Tonight I read an old thread somewhere where several people answered this overall question with "ask the people at your LFS". Well considering that "live" sand and liverock are the bread and butter of these places, of course they'll advise against it in any capacity. One LFS in Michigan told me the Bicolor Angel fish he sold me was a good eater. I killed half the tank overfeeding in desparation trying to get him to eat ANTHING at home with at least 10 different foods. Another LFS simply told me that a baby panther grouper was "kind of mean"... but failed to tell me how he would systematically eat every fish in the tank starting with the cleaner wrasse of all fish.
In FL my LFS experiences haven't been much better, considering the same LFS I was paying to house my fish during a move sold my worm eel in less than 2 weeks when he couldn't even identify it. A couple weeks ago I went browsing stores to get caught up, and Naso Tangs (for one single example) which used to cost about $35-45 now cost $90-100+. When I asked about the price hikes over that past 6 years instead of hearing my own theory that collection restrictions have clamped down on supply, that instead shipping costs are to blame... yet damsels which once cost $2-3 for some reason dont now cost $25. Meanwhile online fish suppliers have free shipping, while the rock most fo them are selling for $5 per lb. looks like regular bleached rock that is kind of dirty from being in the vats.
SO I don't believe in LFS's, but I believe in YOU, who do have actual experiences in this topic.
Or course true live rock is completely illegal to collect (and not even available near shore anyways), but the marine collection guidelines for Florida make no mention of sand (which is infinite compared to the hobby especially compared to commercial fishing and the demand there).
Now for me the logic is quite simple: maxiumum biological diversity is the maximum environment. Within reason of course, as in people obsessed with eating organic anything swearing by the concept of 'organics' despite the fact that many of the most toxic and deadly substances on earth come from nature. Or how too much water will kill a plant (that REQUIRES water to exist).
Now I get the concept that there can be parasites or other hitchikers that are undesireable.
Getting back to the true thread topic however, in my own experience of years of marine aquaria where I'm at in Tampa, for about 4-5 years, after moving here from Michigan where I started in the hobby (and learned most of the core screwup lessons such as overfeeding etc)... despite the warnings I ALWAYS added pretty much everything I could that had any sort of place in my tank. And yes, without quarantining.
This went from everything from all sorts of odd invertebraes, various rock chunks that had cool things like barnacles on them, scoops of sand from virtually every locale I happened to visit from Tampa to Ft Myers to the Keys, fish even ogly ones during my first stretch here when I was broke, etc.
Eventually only store type fish ever made it into my tank, but there were plenty of creepy crawlies from the store, and the locale. Thinking back the only real losses I had were things such as filter feeding oysters or such I lacked the system to support.
As far as algae problems, in hindsight they did exist during a long period but the last roughly 2 years that all ended. My last tank had been a 4'x2'x2' tank, with huge surface area. I would generally go to the trouble to go to the grocery store and get RO water, but going to school everynight while working full time in those days... my biggest menace was evaporation. The thing had to have been going down 2-4" a week. In a 120 gallon that was a big problem in making sure tap water never went in. The thing was, the lower it would get the faster it would evaporate.
But eventually I was able to afford an RO system built into the stand (thank ebay), an auto-topoff-system, and proper glass lids.
After this all of my problems went away: hassles trying to keep the levels up with proper water, undesireable algae blooms, etc. I dont recall losing any store fish during any of this, but they were definitely happier. I even had one that I didn't notice until intense observation once I got it home... it had ick that I didnt notice at the store. I was freaked, but decided to play my luck as destroying the tank to catch one fish seemed like worse than the solution. In those days I was able to scrape by to get my ideal DT, and maintain it within reason, but the extra burden of 'proper' quaratining was a major burden.
Anyways, that fish got perfectly healthy after a couple weeks, none of the others got sick. I attributed it to the in system RO upgrade specifically. I didn't get out of the hobby from any problems from semi-regularly adding locally collected whatever, instead after moving 3 times in a few months after trying to move in with a chick who got all crazy, blah, moving 120 gallons breaks you. The fish store that was supposed to take care of my fish for a couple weeks while I moved sold them on me, whatever.
My favorite fish of them was one my good friend caught by hand while out fishing in Tampa Bay. It was 'green worm eel' that the LFS guy sold without even being able to identify it. I didnt even know what it truly was, then, I could never find anything on google by trying to describe it. It was about a foot long, lived a good 2+ years old under my care, tunneled all under the substrate, non-aggressive, RARE, COOL. My friend brought him over and dropped him 'right in' (acclimation of course) and he disappeared for a long period of months but one day jetted out of nowhere and scared everyone. No quarantine, I didn't have a place to do it, and he needed to get into the water.
My filtration from the start moving down here was primarily 3 Magnum filter canisters, and some BS minor filters as backups. The Magnums I kept daisy chained. One was the micron filter element I kept charged with diatomaceous earth, next was the proper carbon chamber, and the last was filled with those hollow clay bio pellet things. Also in them was this filter pouch thing I had forever that had this odd micro BB shaped media in it that it claimed was to remove heavy metals, which I could recharge I think by boiling. But eventually was able to afford a good wet/dry sump w/ built in skimmer, and I had other things I had built such as a 4' tall fluidized sand filter made from 4" schedule 80 PVC I salvaged from a construction site. It was hell tuning that thing to work right without being able to see inside it but I eventually did.
The only thing I really had left on my list was a refugium sump. But I saw the others as more important in providing the fish life support, the refugium was the final step before I'd buy actual coral pieces and anenomes.
Without the refugium I will say that I was able to buy random pieces of liverock here and there (which was actually the point, in providing maximum diversity)... which finally climaxed with only buying from Tampa Bay Saltwater (when they still had their walkin location)... This rock was breathtaking in my experience. When I left Michigan in 2001 there were stores charging upwards to $15 per lb. (literally) for Fiji rock that WAS purple, but had NOTHING on this rock. The life that poured out of this rock only spread onto and into everything else.
Despite my (in hindsight) overall lackluster filtration versus adding in random locally collected sand and bits and creatures, for the better part of the run, not one store bought fish 'ate it'. Nothing did, that I can recall which wasn't some specialty oddity which would only be inherently fed in the same manner as coral.
NOW... I didn't ever have a refugium built completely out of local salty sand. Nor did I have a "DSB" built from such. I had about a couple inches across the bottom of the tank that built up over time.
PARASITES never destroyed my tank.
NOR did polutants ever cause harm that I can see in hindsight.
HOWEVER, in comtemplating using deep sand elements and lots of sand segments, and perhaps some layers of "mud" harvested semi-near mangrove areas, in particular are of my concern ARE would-be pollutants.
BUT in general I'm anxious to hear from others who have had direct experience with locally collected salty substrates. If you've had a bad experience, are you sure you used RO water only to top it off?
Thinking back, topping the damn thing off all the time before I had built in RO ended up meaning few actual water changes (whatsoever), in just trying to keep it full (which wasn't always RO water even, it was such a hassle).
Tonight I read an old thread somewhere where several people answered this overall question with "ask the people at your LFS". Well considering that "live" sand and liverock are the bread and butter of these places, of course they'll advise against it in any capacity. One LFS in Michigan told me the Bicolor Angel fish he sold me was a good eater. I killed half the tank overfeeding in desparation trying to get him to eat ANTHING at home with at least 10 different foods. Another LFS simply told me that a baby panther grouper was "kind of mean"... but failed to tell me how he would systematically eat every fish in the tank starting with the cleaner wrasse of all fish.
In FL my LFS experiences haven't been much better, considering the same LFS I was paying to house my fish during a move sold my worm eel in less than 2 weeks when he couldn't even identify it. A couple weeks ago I went browsing stores to get caught up, and Naso Tangs (for one single example) which used to cost about $35-45 now cost $90-100+. When I asked about the price hikes over that past 6 years instead of hearing my own theory that collection restrictions have clamped down on supply, that instead shipping costs are to blame... yet damsels which once cost $2-3 for some reason dont now cost $25. Meanwhile online fish suppliers have free shipping, while the rock most fo them are selling for $5 per lb. looks like regular bleached rock that is kind of dirty from being in the vats.
SO I don't believe in LFS's, but I believe in YOU, who do have actual experiences in this topic.
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