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Introduction
to reef keeping in Italy:
I
live in Verona, the famous city where Shakespeare set his play “Romeo
and Juliet,” and I am now running my fourth marine tank, more
precisely a stunning 300 gallon reef system.
I
got started in this hobby by chance, about seven years ago with a
47 gallon tank lit by three fluorescent tubes, only because I knew
an aquarium shopkeeper told me it was easy to do!
After
less than an year, when I understood that the guy didn’t have a
clue about what he was talking about, I left him with his
ignorance and started ”travelling” from shop to shop, reading
books and visiting related USA web sites that at the time started
to flourish.
During these years, I learned that for a country that is surrounded by
the sea for three quarters of its perimeter, Italy’s number of marine
aquarists is very, very low, and naturally concentrated in the biggest
and more advanced cities, like Rome and Milan.
Luckily,
the average quality level of the shops in the other regions is getting
better with the years, but I have sadly to admit that millions of poor
animals have been literally terminated in recent years and some still
are, by the ignorance of too many people that TRY to open an aquarium
shop and use these creatures just like any other product they may have
on their shelves!
Another
problem regarding this beautiful hobby in my country is the poor quality
of reef keeping literature: It’s almost impossible to find a good book
in Italian that deserves to be so called!
Because
of the fact that very few people speak fluent English or German, the
majority of the Italian reefers, set up tanks without almost any
knowledge of what they are doing, putting themselves in the hands of
only one shopkeeper, that if you are lucky will tell you that you can
keep shrimp with a Lion fish or an Eel. I have met very few shopkeepers
with a real passion for this hobby, and a true knowledge of the subject!
During
the last three or four years, we have seen the distribution of products
made by German and American companies through the whole country that,
thank God, have brought some light (HQI J),
to the neon era that was rooted in this country. Now, skimmers, HQI
lighting, Jaubert and Berlin systems, are part of the life of modern
Italian Reefers. Aqua Medic ,Deltec, Elos, Aquarium Systems, Kent
Marine, Dennerle, Tunze and other famous brand are now on the shelves of
the best aquarium shops, and lucky me, I have one only 500 meters from
my home!
Despite
the growth of this hobby in Italy, the price of live stock, food and
supplies are rising year by year, affecting the buying capacity of
Italian reefers that do not have Manhattan wages.
Just
a few examples:
-
Live rocks: US $20 per kilo
-
Stony coral 10cm: US $150/200
-Surgeon
fish 5/6cm:US $80/90
-Kent
supplies 16oz: Average US $30/40 per bottle.
-Reef
Crystals salt 60 litres: US $15
And
so on...
Reef
keeping in the US is much easier and cheaper!
To
finish my introduction I would like to say that I always believe that
“things” have to be made with passion and love; otherwise, it’s
better to not do them. I underline this concept especially if we are
talking about living creatures, such as corals, fish and all the animals
that mankind uses as company. Too many people keep animals for their
amusement without considering the importance of giving them a healthy
life in captivity, with plenty of space to move, the right company, the
right food, and so on.... Nevertheless, a positive sign that things are
changing can be seen by surfing new related web sites on the subject in
the Italian language:
www.zanclus.itMy web site, that
will be available to the public in a couple of months.
Ideas
and information:
I
am now running my fourth marine system, this time 300 gallons ( more
than 1100 litres), that is build as follow:
-
Display tank: 230 x 60 x 60 centimetres, 19mm thick glass without
reinforcing bars and a double bottom, 830 litres.
-
Sump: 150 litres
-
Macroalgae refugium: 125 liters
-
Skimmer: Aqua Medic 30 Turboflotor 5000 baby
-
Calcium reactor controlled by a Ph Computer with a Ph probe in the sump:
Aqua Medic 15
-
Lighting: 2 x 400watts Aqualine + 140w actinic neon
-
Movement pumps: 4 x 3500 l/h Aqua Medic Ocean Runner
-
100 kilos of live rocks
-
120 kilos of fossil calk stone to lift up the barrier
My
tank that is running since August 2001, utilizes a hybrid Berlin method,
because of the macroalgae refugium and the thick sand layer.
I
set up this new tank trying to avoid the mistakes I made with my old
ones, the 47 gallon, the 20 gallon, and another 270 gallon that
literally exploded in Jan 2000, flooding my house.(See picture of my old
tank 180 x 70x 90 h
centimeters).
I
learned to avoid the use of bioballs, ceramic cylinders, sponges, wool
and all the other old filtration systems that in my opinion are big
producers of organic nutrients.
I
stated out this project buying a custom made tank by the best company we
have in Italy, the Ferrari of the aquariums,” ELOS,” that gave me a
full 10 year warranty. (One flooding was enough!).
As
for equipment, I prefer Aqua Medic because they are competitive in
price, with extremely high quality and durability.
For
somebody that always had soft corals, my dream was a stony coral
and clam tank. The project started taking shape, with small
cuttings, taken from old broken down tanks of myself and other
guys.
I
believe that certain animals have to stay in the sea, either
because of their adult size, or their behaviour or aggressiveness.
I think all adult fish should be forbidden in the trade, along
with ahermatypic corals. These in the best of circumstances last
but a few months in captivity. We can add to this list Goniopora
Stokesi and its family. I don’t want to make this a Green Peace proclamation, but just people to recognize how
important this hobby is in helping all the people (and their
friend and relatives) that get involved in this “magic world”
to understand the fragility of the reef’s ecosystems, fragility
that should be treated with better respect by all of us. For this
reason, I set up my 300 gallon marine system, with live rocks,
corals, and fish taken in the most part from old tanks and from
cuttings. This minimized taking creatures from the wild. My dream
is to see that all hard and soft corals, fish, and clams come from
aqua farming. Unfortunately, it is still cheaper to buy wild
specimens from the poor collectors from poor countries.
I
try to have as much biodiversity as possible. This makes it necessary to
have small specimens then to have a few large corals with large fish.
Coral reefs are made with such a harmony of colours, shapes, and variety
of creatures, all with their little but indispensable role, that I find
it insane to destroy this balance just because somebody doesn’t like,
for example, a sea cucumber because it looks like a turd, as a guy told
me yesterday. Our mini reefs have to be as natural as possible, because
this is the only way to get closer to the perfection of nature.
Methodology:
In
the beginning I followed the Berlin method as it was originally
conceived, so I installed powerful lighting, powerful water pumps, and
filled the tank with porous calcareous rock and plenty of live rock. I
put a thin layer of coralline sand on the bottom, only in front of the
rocks and used half of “old” water taken from a shop’s reef tanks.Theuse of plenty of live water
cycled the system quickly.
As
I said, my dream and my goal were
to create an SPS community, so after only 30 days, with water parameters
and bio values stabilized, I inserted a very small fragment of Acropora
sp. , that was about the size of a little finger nail. That fragment is
now, after 11 months, a small Acropora,
2-cm wide and 4-cm tall with three/four branches. I know it’s slow
starting with cuttings, but it’s much more satisfying not to take
animals from the wild. Furthermore, fragments tend to do better than
large wild colonies.
I
set up the display tank in my loft like room, with the sump holding all
the pumps and a calcium reactor. In the next room that’s part of the
garage, I put the skimmer, evaporation replacement tank and, after few
months from the start-up, I added a macro algae refugium tank. The
refugium is supplied with water by a small pump inside the sump, and the
water that overflows from it, falls back in the sump via gravity. In my
refugium I have four different kinds of Caulerpa,
and five beautiful crabs that nobody wanted in their tanks.
The
construction scheme of my 300 gallon reef system:
Display
tank with two overflows, six pump outlets, and two pumps
circulating water on the bottom. The sump has all the pumps and
calcium reactor.
Skimmer,
refugium and refilling tanks
After
one year from it’s set up, I added 8cm of small grain coral sand,
suggested recently by the
most advanced aquarists on the planet. I am still waiting on its
maturation to report benefits to the system, but I’m confident it will
work.
Lighting:
The
system is made to work as much as possible as it is in nature (I still
have a long way to go), so I set up the lighting to work as follow:
-
10:00 AM Actinic
-
10:30 AM East HQI
-
11:30 AM West HQI
-
10:30 PM East HQI
-
11:30 PM West HQI
-
12:00 am Actinic
Aqua
Medic 4w Moonlight always on.
Water
Movement:
Water
movement is produced by four 3500 liter per hour pumps that work on
alternate phases.
Filtration:
The
protein skimming is done by a huge Aqua Medic Turboflotor 5000
baby, that I have to say is the best skimmer I ever had.
Additives:
Calcium
is provided by the Aqua Medic 15 liter calcium reactor, controlled
by a Ph computer with an electronic probe in the sump and an
electro valve that opens and closes the CO2 effluent.Ounce a week I replace evaporated water with 10 liters of
kalkwasser, made with deionised water, from my reverse osmosis
system.
Water
Circulation:
All
my pumps are Aqua Medic Ocean Runners, model 3500.
One
of the six I have works twenty-four hours, to replace the water that
overflows in the sump. Two of them make the skimmer works. The other
three, work alternately, with ten minutes of pause every thirty minutes
of running, naturally, alternating the pauses to have almost two pumps
always active. The last three pumps are off at night, starting from 1
AM, when the first one stops, then the second and finally the third.
They start running again progressively in the early morning.
Lighting:
After
having used fluorescent tubes of all kinds, HQIs-150w,HQI-250w, I am now
using two 400w, made by Aqua Medic ABAqualine.
Additional
Filtration:
I
use no mechanical filtration of any kind. I use activated carbon
every 2 to 3 months. Biological filtration is handled by the sand
bed and live rock.
Additives:
Essential
elements, Tech I, Coral Accelerator, Coral Vite, Iron, Strontium&Molibdenum,
Phytoplex, Chromaplex, and one drop of Lugol’s Solution every morning
when lights are off.
Current
Inhabitants:
FISH:
-
Paracanthurus hepatus
-
Acanthurus lineatus
-
Acanthurus achilles
-
Zebrasoma desjardinii
-
Zebrasoma flavescens
-
Odonus niger
-
Mated
pair of Amphiprion
perideraion
-
20
Chromis viridis
-
Ecsenius bicolor
-
Pseudochelinus sp.
-
3 Crysptere
-
2 Nemateleostris magnifica
Feeding
Regimen:
Originally,
I prepared frozen food from a recipe of Eric
Borneman, but I noticed it boosted my PO4 and NO3
a lot.
I
prefer using Elos SVC dried plankton and Sera Micron and Cyclops, mixed
together in a cup and poured in a high flow area, three or four times a
week night time.
I
feed every day, only once a day because of my Paracathurus
Hepatus (5 years in aquariums and now 20cm long), who, at every
feeding time, sweeps water out of the tank with his tail with
excitement!!! The bastard. I feed mixed food twice a week, and the other
days with four kind of flakes and small pellets by Ocean Nutrition and
OSI, and Nori sea weeds by Dennerle or Ocean Nutrition.
Maintenance
Regimen:
I
change the water every month, about 60/100 liters.
The
skimmer is cleaned once a week.
Macro
alga in the refugium are never pruned, crabs and snails eat them
constantly.
Corals
are pruned every two or three months, and traded in to cover
operating expenses.
Proud sponsor of this column
Chemistry:
-
Water temp.: 24/25C Winter – 26/27C Summer
-
Kh/alkalinity: 12/14 dKH
-
Ph: 8.15 night – 8.40 day
-
Calcium: 400 mg/L
-
NO3: 15mg/L
Problems:
After
my Tridacna crocea clams
spawning, they all died of some bacterial disease.
