Tank of the month: November 2017

GIORGIO D'ANTONIO

This month, for our usual award of the tank of the month, we are in Ardea, in the province of Rome, at the home of Giorgio D'Antonio.

So we leave him the honour of telling us his story as an aquarist, which led him to the fantastic results you can see in his current marine tank:

...it all started in April 2016; after 5 years running a freshwater aquarium, a Juwel Rio 300 (120x50x58), I decided to switch to a marine aquarium. The idea was to adapt the tank I already had, designed for freshwater, to marine. The one thing I really did not want to do was drill the tank to connect it to a sump. I should say that my last experience with a marine aquarium went back to 2010, a small 135-litre Acquamar aquarium with a sump.
I started looking things up online to see whether my idea was feasible, that is a marine aquarium without a sump. No luck: almost all opinions were strongly negative. After some hesitation I decided to go for it anyway. I told myself that, given the big limitations, I would be happy with a couple of anemones and a pair of clownfish.

So out went the discus (superb animals!), the whole aquarium was cleaned and, first of all, I bought the skimmer. I chose the internal skimmer made by Juwel. Once the skimmer holder was glued in, in a single morning I bought the bare minimum to start the aquarium straight away, that is:

- 70 kg of extra-fine live sand (enough for a DSB of about 8 cm),

- 20 kg of Tropic Marin salt.

On the evening of 1 May 2016 the aquarium was up and running.

The tank started with the original light unit fitted with 4 x 54 watt T5 tubes. I had to replace the old T5s with others suited to marine use, 10,000 kelvin, with a full 12-hour photoperiod right from the start.
I had started the 2010 marine tank (a Berlin system) with Xaqua bacteria, which had kick-started denitrification in 7 days. Since those products were hard to find, I decided to use other, more common ones, expecting the same result.
After only 3 days I added a few LPS; with live sand and rocks it was impossible to detect any nitrite. I started monitoring nitrate: on the fifth day it was already at 10 ppm, panic!!! I immediately ordered online the bacteria I had used in the past, express courier, delivery in 24 hours.
5 days of dosing at three times the dose, and on the tenth day nitrate was at zero.
Shortly afterwards I removed all the T5s and replaced them with 7 Easy LED bars of 54 watts: 3 marine blue, 1 marine & reef and 3 deep blue. In March 2017 I removed the internal skimmer and replaced it with an external hang-on one; I chose the compact Bubble Magus Q3.

So, to sum up:

Tank: Juwel Rio 300, 120x50x58.
Lighting: 7 Easy LED bars of 54 watts, 3 marine blue, 1 marine & reef and 3 deep blue.
Skimmer: Bubble Magus Q3.
Water flow: 1 Jebao RW15 and RW4 plus a 5,600 litres/hour Koralia.
DSB: 8 cm.
Weekly supplements: Color Elements by Fauna Marin.
Water changes: about 50 litres a month.

Fish:

10 Anthias squamipinnis;

2 Anthias dispar;

2 Nemateleotris magnifica;

1 Nemateleotris decora

1 Centropyge loriculus;

1 Centropyge bispinosus;

1 Centropyge acanthops;

1 Paracanthurus hepatus;

3 Apogon margaritophorus;

1 Halichoeres leucoxanthus;

1 Pseudocheilinus hexataenia;

2 Ecsenius stigmatura;

Crustaceans: 3 Lysmata amboinensis;

Echinoderms: Linckia laevigata, Fromia elegans.

I would like to thank the whole staff of L'acquario marino di BallingMania for choosing me as aquarist of the month.
Best wishes to everyone.