atlantic marine?

Check local regs befoer assuming you can release the animals--even those collected locally. Many places have restrictions on releasing any animal from an aquarium, and collecting might require a permit.

You'll probably need a chiller to keep the water cool enough for the locals to thrive.

Otherwise, it wil lbe very similar to a FOWLR tank--lots of threads here and inthe Archives on setup and cycling.

Ditto what Oriongirl said -- check your local regs and laws first.

I don't know if I'd do a native marine tank as a first marine tank - it can be tricky at times and there isn't always alot of people willing to help or able to give good advice when you run into problems -- you might want to try a more basic marine tank first (ie clownfish, etc) and once you have a real solid foundation of experience try a native tank.

That being said, I've kept native salty tanks for years.

I have an article on this that I wrote for the local aquarium club, its also posted here:

http://communitytank.aaquaria.com/articles/nativemarine.htm

However, I would highly recommend picking up at least one good general marine aquarium book and maybe also looking around on Ebay (or used book vendors) for John Quinn's "Our Native Fishes" -- an excellent out-of-print book on collecting and keeping native freshwater and marine fishes.

My first marine tank was a native tank! I live near the Puget Sound, and my brother and I (when we were too young to care about regs for catching stuff) would bring stuff home from the beach for our 20 gallon tank. A few problems/situations we had:

-Keeping the tank cool! We floated plastic pop bottles filled with ice in the tank during the summer. Not as efficient as a cooler, but cheap when you're 13 and 15 years old!

-The fish didn't work out. Tried a few different kinds, but the anemones always ate them. So, all we had was hermits, crabs, and anemones. And whatever critters emerged from the sand.

-Fortunately, no one was picky about food. Frozen brine shrimp, etc for everyone.

The tank is now at my old highschool where students have yet to kill it <cringes>.

All I can say is thank God for patient parents!
-Sarah

I am working on one.

I have a "Georgia Coast" set up... I've had it up and running for a week or so now.. just getting it going good... Use live sand and oyster bar rock from St. Simons area..... I have alot of small crabs several diffren't type a small blue crab quarter to half dollar size...
a few small shrimp and several small hermits... Theres also 3 minnows.. all doing great it seems.. I plan to get some small live rock peices from TBS just to add some diversity.. the oysterrock and light colored sand keeps the tnak pretty mellow looking.. The crabs are great fun to watch.