Our interview to Pietro Romano
Hi Pietro, we have to give you our best compliments for your, ehm, ultra wonderful aquarium, and we want to thank you for the opportunity you grant us to invite here to visit, to take pictures, and to see it.
“Hi Danilo, it’s my pleasure to welcome here and I thank you for your compliments. From aquarist I like to show my aquarium to other aquarists, my doors are always open.”
When did you build this aquarium? We know you are a long term aquarist.
“Yes, you have right, as so many aquarists, this is not my first tank, but I’ve started this adventure in 2006, may, coming from a DSB aquarium, to find new motivations, and to try the pure Berlin method.”
We can guess your philosophy looking through the images of your incredible tank, but have you followed some guidelines? Where have you found inspiration?
“Truly I had a very complex idea in mind, I wanted to search and to find the right mix between small polyped stony corals (SPS) and a great number of Fish. And I’m very proud of the result. I think to have achieved what I dreamed.”
How have you built from scratch your aquarium?
“First of all I’ve inserted a great amount of live rocks, I think you can notice this, almost 180 kg, if I remember well, and if you consider the 1.400 liters of water, I have a ratio of 1 kg of rocks for every 7,8 liters of water. Perfect for the Berlin method, don’t you think so?”.
And after you have thought to fish, right?
“Yes, it’s an easy guess! I’ve inserted, all together, a school of fish, small Acanthuridae and small Angel Fish. I mean, small for the size in the moment I have chosen them. I put one Acanthurus sohal, a pair of Acanthurus achilles, one Ctenochaetus hawaiiensis, one Acanthurus leucosternon, a few Zebrasoma xanthurum, one Zebrasoma gemmatum, a few Zebrasoma flavescens, one Pygoplites diacanthus, one Pomacanthus imperator, many Pseudanthias squamipinnis and a pair of Acreichthys tomentosus to get rid of aiptasia and anemonia majano.
And after 8 years only the imperator is passed by during last year, and now I don’t want to insert another Pomacanthus imperator for the fear of unbalancing the harmony.”
In the picture above you can see many of my fishes during the moment of meal based on flakes, they know when I do it, and they’re prepared to fight to eat, I advise you to see the video where in the last moments Danilo has recorded the meal time, it’s incredible, trust me.
But, have you not some problem between your tank mates? Is there no fight for the territory?
“I have to admit that until now all the group live together with no problem at all, so I have no intention to insert some other fish, maybe I could take some different decision when many of them will be dead, not now.”
The movement inside aquarium
Have you changed something during the years, or have you remained faithful to your first preparation? For example, what about the water recirculation?
“by controlling water parameters, as the time passed by, I have noted the recirculation became weak, as you can guess because the growth of the corals’s colonies, now I have 6 Ecotech Marine Vortech MP40w and 2 Tunze Turbelle Stream 6105“.
Well we are completely in line with your thought, the currents inside aquarium are very different when the tank is empty and when it’s full of colonies.
Where did you put your propeller pumps? And why?
“As you can see from the pictures, I’ve placed the pumps in a very standard manner, they’re in the side parts of tank, 4 VorTech and 1 Tunze on the right, and 2 VorTech and the other Tunze on the left.
Maybe the only particularity is to have placed two VorTech MP40w in the bottom of the rear, one in front to the other, to permit good circulation of water, in this way I’ve avoided the accumulation of sediment, that, as you know, are one of the causes of the phosphate growth thanks to a making of ortophosphate.”
