Albert-
I have just completed the placement of the plexiglass "sand-bar" in my 55 gallon tank and I have a question regarding the rational for placement of Live Sand as described in the Jo-bert Project. In talking to others who know about the Jaubert Method of LS placement, they strongly-warn me to avoid placing the LS in front of a 4 inch plexiglass dam that runs down the length of the tank. Do you have any justification for the placement of this sand?
Albert: Actually the tank was so successfully set up that way that the "sand bar" approach was coined to refer to what we called the Jo-Bert method. I have a video that I made on it that shows corals that are fabulously open and looking just fully opened and thriving.
The idea came to me when testing in other aquariums with live sand that only had sand in portions of the tank and not on its entire bottom. This lead me to think what if we dammed the sand up in front of the live rock and created a sand buffer there to act as the live sand filter. This was tested on a 20 gallon tank for several months with great success and with the corals in that tank doing real well.
The thickness of the sand layer is a matter of how many diggers and stirrers you add to the tank. If you have enough of them and the sand is really live, the tank will do great and at far less expense than spreading it out all over the tank. It is however just another approach and not a replacement method for the more traditional one. It does have one great advantage though: you can easily convert a tank that has only rock in it to this type of set-up by moving the front pieces of rock out of the way and placing the acyrlic divider in place, holding it and adding the sand. If you wish to add sand everywhere you need to take all the rock out and that is not only much more time consuming but also cost a lot more money and creates far more stress on the animals. The latter should definitely not be forgotten.
Chuck: Personally, I trust your years of expertise in this hobby and have struggled with the H2S potential. However, in reading your recent articles about Live Sand I'm now aware that there are many variations to the placement that Dr. Jaubert developed...I don't have a problem with the Jo-bert Project's placement of the sand-bar, just how can you overlook the obvious danger of H2S?
Albert: Thank you for your kind words. You should add the sand and make sure it comes from a real good source so that you know it is live. Add about half and two week later add the rest and you will NOT have a problem but you will need to put in sand stirrers.
Chuck: Thank you for your time (I know that Atlanta awaits) I just would like to tell others more than "it is a method that worked well for Albert Thiel"...kinda hard to justify.
Albert: The method works because the sand is live and gets more oxygen transfer (albeit not a great deal as we would not want that anyway) than in other tanks because the back of it allows diffusion of a little amount of oxygen underneath the acrylic plate. This is not the case in traditional Jaubert.
Mind you my own tank, before I took it down in anticipation of the move, and a difficult to fix leak, had nearly 6 inches of sand everywhere, and I never had problems wih hydrogen sulfide. It is all a matter of gradually building the layer of sand up, especially if you plan to go with a very thick and large layer. Again you will need to have high quality live sand (I culture my own but used to have it flown airport to airport so that I would have it the same day - cause I had to drive to the airport to pick it up). There is an article in the DL-Fee area on how to Culture your own Live Sand.
Albert
Reply by Chuck:
Albert-
So...no matter what the dimensions - within reason - (even in your case with the six-inch thick LS substrate) the Jo-bert Project works w/o generating hydrogen sulfide because, the anaerobic species of bacteria that populates it prevents its generation (even better with stirrers ?).
Albert: When the sand is live there actually are no true anaerobic bacteria, but bacteria that live in an anoxic area (very low in oxyen). They are callled facultatively aerobic anaerobic bacteria. If the oxygen levels falls too low they turn anaerobic and you get hydrogen sulfide, if the oxygen stays real low but sufficient they feed on NO3 and on O2 and do not go anaerobic so no hydrogen sulfide is produced at all because there is no anaerobic decomposition taking place.
To achieve the anoxic level and not the anaerobic level you need the stand stirrers. Another very very important point that is not frequently mentioned is that the higher the oxygen content of the water is, the less chance of H2S and anaerobic activity because O2 diffuses into the sand to a very small degree (Jaubert used the plenum to enhance this effect but, we have since found out that the plenum is not necessary). Stirrers and high O2 levels will do it for you
Chuck: Also the better cultured the LS (higher population of bacteria) the better success is obtained ?
Albert: Yes because then you do not have areas where due to bacterial absence the sand could go anaerobic.
Chuck: Somewhere I read that these anaerobic bacteria are ultimately responsible for NO3 reduction.
Albert: That is correct but that is a different technology (using lactose or sugars or alcohol)and really is based on a different principle than what is at work here.
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