Tank of the month: September 2017

ORAZIO RAGUSA

This month, among many, we chose to reward the tank of our passionate friend Orazio Ragusa from Catania.
He tells us:

"I started with freshwater in 2009 with a tank where I kept 2 angelfish and a splendid Astronotus ocellatus. After about two years I gave it up to set up another one, where I added a beautiful pair of discus that I kept for another two years; but I saw my friends' marine aquariums and realised they were something else entirely compared to freshwater, which is more static. So I decided to give it a try, starting with a small 50-litre tank. But, as they say, appetite comes with eating, so in September 2015 I had my current extra-clear tank assembled by a glazier and had the cabinet built with an aluminium frame clad in wood.
But without proper equipment, losses were unfortunately the order of the day, especially among the SPS. Everything changed when I got to know BallingMania, and with Ciro Murino's advice I gradually improved the equipment and the way I ran the tank, until I could reach satisfying results".

So let's come to the features and the technical side of the tank: 70x40x50 (h); water flow from 2 Mover 4600 pumps; Razor R420R 160 W lighting; Tunze 9410 skimmer; Sicce Syncra 2.5 return pump; Aqua Trend Evolution 3-channel dosing pumps.
The triad values are kept constant with the Triton Core 7 protocol.

Orazio doses about 40 ml of phytoplankton a day and makes a 20-litre partial water change every 15 days.
As for the corals in the tank, he keeps soft corals as well as LPS and SPS.

In fact we can see a beautiful colony of Zoanthus, a Favia, a Caulastrea, an Acanthastrea, some Palythoa, a Xenia, a Euphyllia, a fluorescent green Sinularia, a Lobophytum, a Sarcophyton, an Acropora caliendrum, a tricolor, a nobilis, an echinata, a Montipora foliosa and a digitata. Completing the fauna in the tank are two Chrysiptera, a Hexataenia, two Ocellaris, a Synchiropus splendidus and a Zebrasoma flavescens.