Is my lfs owner feeding me a bunch of bunk?

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LS refers to sand that has had teh time to be coated with bacteria, thus making it LIVE. LS can also refer to LS with detrivores (copepods and amphopods, etc.) which are the critters that live in the sand bed. You can achieve this by starting with dry playsand from the garden section at Home Depot. If your tank it already set up then you want to cure it (coat it with bacteria) outside of the tank. Check the Articles section for how to do that (same as for LR).

Adding LR will add some detrivores to the sand bed or you could purchase one or more detrivore kits and add those. The best is to get a cupfull to a couple of pounds of LS from a local reefer and add that to your cured LS bed.
 
The pictures of the sand do not show on the eBay site so I can't tell what they're selling. IMO...

Get dry sand. Cure it. Add some detrivores. It will be better than the deal on eBay. Don't add the detrivores and it will be the same as the eBay deal but at $6.00 for a 50# bag of sand and $10.00 for a Rubbermaid container to cure it in.

If the sand is not coming with loads of life besides the bacteria, why pay for it? If it is, it may very well be a good deal. I might buy 5 -10 pounds to seed the tank after using mostly dry sand as a base.
 
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