can you use beach sand from so. florida

[richie a rich]

i live here in south florida and i wanted to know if i can use sand from the beach

[Johnson7]

I've heard far more no's than yes's on this subject. It seems there is way to much pollution near the beach. From what I can tell you should really go out hundreds of feet from the shore to avoid problems.

[2004jeepoutlander]

maybe out in the keys like a saml l reef out there

[mduvall219]

i currently have sand from sanibel island and it is doing wonderful
copes and lots of live critters in it and the corals are doing great
but tifwiw

[mikeadams1985]

i read that all the waste and pollution washes up on the beach, so id assume the sand from the beach is full of waste and pollution.

Id head further out to sea and get it.

[hllywd]

I sorta have the idea to bring a couple buckets back from the Deerfield beach area for my new 90. Unless someone can tell me why the sand at the beach is somehow more polluted than 200 yards off shore where the first reef is it's difficult for me to understand why it would be unsuitable. I swim there, I dive there, there are no bulletins about eating the fish I know of...

There is a location that has a lot of coral and shell fragments. We don't normally drive and it's difficult to fly back with buckets of sand so I've never tried.... but I can let you know how it works in a couple weeks. :D

Years ago I brought some back from Nags Head, NC that was mostly fragmented shells, the tank was FO and it worked fine and looked great.

[rustybucket145]

I think the pollution concept has to do with the fact that gas and oils float on top of the water. Hence the only way that they could get 200yds offshore is if the ocean dropped in depth to that point. I personally don't have any experience with this but I have fished on several beaches even in remote locations and yes pollution was present on the beaches. It is present at all beaches. You are just not looking hard enough.

[itstheantitang]

The crashing wave action makes the foam that is skimmate, which is soaked into the sand on the shore.

If you collect it from the area around the beach, be aware of trash in the sand.

[Mr Bojangles]

well IMO I know of two people locally that got it from a central Florida beach, cleaned the heck out of the sand and there tanks are fine. BUT! It is a risk since who knows whats in there so dose a few bucks saved really worth your tank?

[DaveG99]

I have a 1" layer in my 50 gallon that I got in the intercoastal. Its grey sand and it has lots of little critters in it. I added about 3" of aragonite on top of it though after about a month or 2. I can understand worrying about pollution if you lived in new jersey or something but Florida is pretty clean.