Tank of the month: January 2021

GAETANO LUCA LONGHI

Serving in the Carabinieri with one eye on the tank: that is the motto of Gaetano Luca Longhi, 48, married with three children, a Carabiniere serving in L'Aquila with a burning passion for the marine aquarium, and proud owner of the little cube we chose as January's "tank of the month".

"It's too beautiful, I fell in love with it", he tells me, proudly showing me the Euphyllia he has fragged a thousand times for friends. And someone who talks like that cannot help suffering from "acute ballingmania", which in Gaetano's case showed its first symptoms at the tender age of eighteen. "The aquatic world fascinated me so, since I was good at DIY and had five pieces of glass to hand, I built my first small freshwater aquarium", he says. "I kept the classic guppies and platies in it, which of course started having loads of babies. Then I went bigger. No half measures".

Meaning, Gaetano?

"From forty litres I went to four hundred. A big second-hand tank, where I kept African cichlids for several years. Then, when I had already started a family, came an Askoll that became a little masterpiece; it looked like an underwater garden, like a Dutch aquarium. A pity that at some point it started leaking, and I had to empty it in a hurry. Who knows, maybe it had been damaged at the time of the 2009 earthquake; I lived, and still live, in Paganica, in the province of L'Aquila".

When did you move to marine?

"A couple of years ago. I started with a Newa 50, about forty litres, one of those you buy "all-inclusive", with lamp and everything. But since I am a Carabinieri lab technician, I tinkered with it a bit, changing the light and making some other modifications. In the end it turned into a nice little soft coral aquarium but, you know how it is, appetite comes with eating. So I went a bit bigger, setting up the tank I have now".

Can you describe it for us?

"It is a 50 by 50 cube with a sump and a Sicce Syncra 2.0 return. The skimmer is a Bubble Magus Curve A5, while for water flow I chose two Jebao pumps, an OW 10 and a SOW4, whose flow is controlled by a timer. For lighting, I put an AI Prime alongside a Hydra 32HD, placed a bit diagonally so that it lights the part of the corals that the Hydra alone would leave too much in shadow".

Balling or reactor?

"Balling, of course. I use ATI Essentials Pro. As for husbandry, I rely on the Zeovit protocol, starting with the Korallen-Zucht zeolite reactor with fixed carbon. I use the classic products, first of all Zeobak and its food Zeostart. Again following the Zeovit method, I have a couple of centimetres of sand on the bottom.

Let's come to the population of your little cube.