"Natural" Sand...

Yah I bet you all in WA and those in OR hate us Cal-invadorians.  I worked a job in Eugene and the general consensus there is pretty anti CA.  No hard feeling though, I know how it feels to have your favorite spots built up by some transplant yuppy and complete communities turned upside down for developement.  Its a wit be cold for me up there in winter though.  I like the average temps we get around here most the time.

I don't envy anyone in retail, dang, wholesale is hard enough.  I worked at an LFS for several years running their marine department.  Talk about re-hell.  I loved helping people set-ip their tanks and watch them grow thru the defferent levels of the hobby.  I just hated having to sell items to people I knew didn 't have a tank capable of caring for the livestock and advised against purchasing it.  In the long rung I could only give advise, if they wanted it, I  had to sell it to them according to the management.

If you ever want to do a local tank, find tidepools that are farely high up and go for those animals.  They're the hardiest of the bunch as far as taking tamp changes and salinity changes.  I had a friend running a 3 tear local tank.  Big open water tank (180g- huge at that age) dropped into a tidal area and finally into a very open tidal area that was used as a touch tank.  He ran this for his middle school (k-8) for some time.  They'd let him leave school weekly for water and critters and he had a period with the tank daily.