Salento Aquarium – 8° edition – 2010 april 16/18 – Reportage

As anticipated by now over a month ago, I was hosted in Lecce during the event “Salento Aquariums” , where I gave a lecture entitled “Aquarium, how taking pictures“, the presentation will be online soon for free consultation.

In this adventure, I was accompanied by Zanna Bianca, and I have also quote the legendary Maurizio Quarta, our guide for Lecce and Salento Aquariums, which has made us feel at ease and accompanied us inside of a culinary journey and showed us many fascinating sides of Lecce. Thanks Maurizio.

Maurizio on the left and Zanna Bianca on the right, intent to order …

The event took place during three days from Friday to Sunday, and I must say we were very surprised by the show and by the organization of the event.

I, but Zanna Bianca with me, we used to see shows very different from this and maybe for different purposes, the large trade fairs in Nuremberg and to a lesser extent of Bologna to the lovely meeting in Formia (which unfortunately this year overlapped Salento Aquariums, so I’m not allowed to participate).

Salento Aquariums is an exhibition focused also to families, children, the city itself. I had never seen schools visiting any other aquariology event, with all the childrens intent to give a look at many aquariums, following explanations of the mare nostrum (Mediterranean Sea) aquariums.

We saw at least three different television stations that have come to register part of the event, not to speak about a lot of advertising around Lecce, in radio and also in local televisions. A great organization although if it was organized by a small group of aquarium keepers, the aquarist Salentino Group, and now we are at the eighth edition. We must make a big applause to these guys.

Inside the event there were two conferences held by the world expert Heiko Bleher about discoveries of new fish in the Rio Apaporis and specificity of fish Pterophyllum Altum climb and the fish of the Rio Atapabo.

You can see the yellow jacket by Heiko and his unmistakable hat

In addition, the presentation of a new book, edited in collaboration with Heiko Bleher, named DISCUSANNUAL010,  where, curiously, was asked those present to choose the new book cover

Also we can not forget the International Championship Mediterranean Discus, where lots of people have taken from different parts of the world, although unfortunately the problems related to the eruption of the Icelandic volcano has involved some problems and limited the people who wanted to came to this event, and so even at the end of the manifestation there were several problems to return flights of some aquarists.

The Discus were wonderful, however, and also a lover of reef aquariums like me, can not but be fascinated by these beautiful fish, inhabitants of fresh water …

Then Sunday morning was also held my conference focusing on issues of photography in the aquarium, which I’ll just publish the extracts in this site as soon as possible.

The event was held in the Council City of Lecce, in the center, in an exhibition area of 1000 square meters, in a beautiful historic building, where there was also a show on aquatic biodiversity of Salento, large space for fresh water and to the Mediterranean Sea, unfortunately for me a bit ‘less reef aquariums for once 🙂

The morning after a hearty breakfast of fresh local pastries…

We ran through the exhibition

In a meeting between aquariums and antiques

Exhibition visitors

Small aquariums on display

The beautiful aquarium dedicated to jellyfish

A family observes admired aquaria exposed

A aquarium that shows us a biotope of Salento Sea

and its inhabitants …

And finally a reef aquarium, illuminated with LED light, leitmotif throughout 2010 as we also will see in the wide reportage dedicated to Interzoo Nuremberg.

And a wonderful Mini Reef

Heiko’s conference, where you can also see the small side tanks that have hosted the participants in the Discus competition.

The presentation of the Book DISCUSANNUAL010

And finally some beautiful Discus in the competition…

A tank of African cichlids

A triptych of clownfishes in their anenome (situation in any case be avoided in home aquariums)

And finally the award of the International Mediterranean Discus Championship competition by Francesco Denitto whom I thank for having me in Salento Aquariums.

Left standing Francesco Denitto while sitting on the right with the unmistakable hat Heiko Bleher

And that’s it, although it would be necessary to mention which wonderful city Lecce is … but this would be another long photographic journey, for which I leave you with some shots that I put on Flickr and you can see by clicking on a beautiful photograph of the Cathedral of Lecce below.

A greeting and thanks to Maurizio, Francesco Denitto and Zanna Bianca, thank you all, and I’m waiting for your comments!