By Jon Brydon & Scott Booth.All images © Scott Booth

This huge aquarium is owned by a chap, who in certain circles is known

as ‘6 metre Pieter’ (no, not those kinds of circles), whom has built this system on the first f loor of his business premises the ‘Open Haarden Centrum’. The ‘OHC’ is a very flash looking bespoke fireplace showroom in Vlaardingen near Rotter-

dam. We fancied bringing a nice marble hearth

back

with us as a souvenir, turned over a price tag and made a comment along the lines that we have always preferred radiators.

The main shop floor hosts this display tank, also a lovely 1000 litre cylindrical azooxanthellate tank, several stunning fire places (obviously) and a bar -yes, a bar, complete with beer fridges and optics from which Pieter has been known to hand out Heinekens of an evening stating: ‘When in the land of Heineken, you must drink Heineken’.

Pieter is a very nice down to earth bloke who is more than happy to entertain the odd reefer

coming in off the streets to dribble on

his carpet and stare in disbelief at what he has cre-

ated. His guest books runneth over with complimentary

comments from visiting reefers

the world over. But enough about all that, the discerning UltraMarine reader wants facts and figures, so here goes!!! The back pane of glass measures

a whopping six metres (that isn’t a misprint and explains the dodgy nick-name) in length, or in old money, 19.7 feet. Each end panel is 165 cm wide and 90 cm tall, the left end of which is a view-ing window all by itself. To look down the length of this tank is quite bizarre. It’s not often you get the chance to look into nearly 20 feet of reef tank. The tank narrows significantly in the middle due to the curve of the front pane and is made out of 26 mm thick glass. The tank’s length was decided upon, not because of the space, not because of running costs, but because six metres was the longest that a single piece of glass could be curved by Pieter’s aquarium installers.

Pieter tells you all this in a very ‘matter of fact’ fashion as if everyone encom-passes these problems when setting up a reef tank. Oh how the other half live

eh? The front pane is actually two sheets of 12 mm float-glass laminated together with 2 mm of resin; this you can only tell by looking down upon it from above. The glass had to be 26 mm thick, firstly due to its unique shape and secondly, as it is holding back 5,800 litres in the display alone. Once you add in the volume of the sumps and a tiny-in-comparison frag/seahorse tank you find the total volume for the whole system is 7,850 litres. Hubba hubba!

To support such a huge tank which weighs well in excess of 8 tons, two spe-

cially designed 19 metre long structural piles had to be inserted in to the ground through the foundations of the building, reaching up and giving much needed sup-port to the first floor. The top fascia of the tank is fixed on

both ends to sliding runners not dissimilar to those found on kitchen drawers, only industrial size. The whole top fascia panel is made from sheet aluminium and slides forward with ease to exactly one metre from the glass. Below the curved view-ing pane, stretching the entire length is a steel hand rail that has a large solid wood

F e a t u r i n g P i e t e r Va n S u i j l e k o m f r o m V l a a r d i n g e n , R o t t e r d a m

“The whole methodology behind

this tank was to create a natural

looking piece of reef, so that

the livestock added would fit

into their surroundings easier

and act as naturally as they

would in the wild. To be fair,

we think he has cracked it. “

Marine’sU l T i m a T e a q U a r i U m sUltra

above:

a small selection of Pieter’s fish

stock, including some beautifully

coloured anthias, Parrotfish,

and a Copperband butterflyfish

counter on top of it. This provides a platform which, when combined with the open fascia, means that a person can walk along it to feed the fish, add a coral or take photos. It also stops grubby little mitts from reaching up and banging the glass. We won’t do it again, promise... This whole dream began life back in

2005 so has been running for, as near as makes no difference, 3 years. When the

glass was brought in, put into position and sealed, the tank as we know it was finished; all that was left to do before filling was to fix PVC rods vertically along the rear pane. These rods were placed purely to aid the construction of the rockwork forming the reef wall.

The rock was attached by drilling small holes through each piece and then cable tying them to the rods to hide any sign

of anything other than rock, but still leaving an open structure to assist f low and crud removal. It took 2 men working non stop for 18 hours to build and when finished, 1100 kg of live Rock had been used comprising of 900 kg of uncured rock and 200 kg of established rock from Pieter’s old system.

Apart from the feeding frenzy, every-thing blends in with seamless ease. It is

a truly stunning example of colour and form. The tank was initially filled with natural seawater, which was pumped in via a road tanker (see the other article on Arie DeJong in this issue). Over the first few months the normal problems of algae blooms and brown sand occurred, which is somewhat comforting. No matter how large the project or big the budget, everybody has to be patient at first and let nature take its course. Makes us feel slightly less inferior for never encounter-ing the ‘can’t make glass big enough’ problem.

Before long the various cycles and blooms had cleared, and the tank showed no adverse affects. All parameters were spot-on and ready for life to be intro-duced. But hang on, aren’t we forgetting something, how does it all work? Ha ha, fear not, we are just coming to that! Four Red Dragon pumps with a

combined capacity of 48,000 litres per hour are mounted inside the tank for internal f low. These pumps are hidden from view by the rockwork exceptionally well; there’s a reason we couldn’t get a photo of one of them. Another large pump, we are told, is situated under the tank in a closed loop giving an additional 30,000 lph of alternating flow, changing direction every 120 seconds. The return pump from the sump pushes out 19,000 lph, and this water is divided via four outlets exiting near the surface on the rear pane.

It is worth noting that on occasion, the fish are fed by placing frozen food into the sump tank allowing the return pump to blast it out of the inlets on the display. The fish are well tuned to this method and the feeding frenzy that surrounds these outlets is the only real way of knowing that they are there. As you can see from the pictures, the ‘feeding frenzy’ is an insane firework display of colour akin to one of those Sony Bravia TV adverts, only without the bouncy balls or council flat covered in paint. Anyhow, we digress...

To supplement the artificial lighting the tank was built along a wall housing three large external windows all in a row, about 2 metres up from the floor. Al-though every little helps, and in the sum-mer months of course the sun is stronger and for longer, this in no way lights the tank sufficiently to keep a reef. As

a result, 6 x individual 400 watt metal halides and 3 x individual 1000 watt pendants are suspended from the ceiling. These units are immense, each one on its own hanging mechanism for ease of maintenance and manoeuvring. For ad-ditional actinic light, 4 x 140 watt actinic f luorescent tubes are employed.

I n t h e w i n d o w , i s P i e t e r ’ s f r a g / s e a h o r s e t a n k . W i t h s t a b l e p a r a m e t e r s ,

r e d u c e d f l o w a n d g r e a t f e e d i n g , t h e s e a h o r s e s i n t h i s t a n k a r e i n

r e m a r k a b l e c o n d i t i o n . T h e r e i s d r i f t w o o d i n t h i s t a n k t o p r o v i d e

s h e l t e r a n d a g r a v e l b a s e . I n t h e e n d o f t h i s t a n k P i e t e r h a s p u t z e o l i t e

s t o n e s . T h e r e i s a S c o l y m i a i n t h i s t a n k w h i c h i s a l m o s t i m p o s s i b l e t o

p h o t o g r a p h . I t i s i d e n t i c a l t o a n y o f t h e o n e s w e f i n d r e g u l a r l y i n t h e

U K , e x c e p t , d u e t o n o p r e d a t o r s , s t a b i l i t y a n d h i g h f e e d i n g , t h i s c o r a l

h a s i n f l a t e d t o n e a r l y 1 5 i n c h e s a c r o s s , a n d i t i s a b s o l u t e l y s t u n n i n g !

T h e c a n o p y a b o v e t h e a q u a r i u m i s r e m o v a b l e t o a l l o w f u l l a c c e s s t o t h e c o m p l e x l i g h t i n g s y s t e m

F e e d i n g F r e n z yR e d M u s h r o o m s T h e p r o t e i n s k i m m e r S o m e o f P i e t e r ’ s A c r o p o r a sC u s t o m - m a d e f i l t e r r a c k

he likes them. The Deltec reactor was melting down coral skeleton as fast as he could pour it in. Well not quite, but you get the idea.

Two 1000 litre water storage tanks are used, one a top-up reservoir, the other for water changes. Pieter changes 1500 litres of water per week, every week and has cleverly built a full drainage system below the tiled floor of his sump room. With this much water splashing about, f looding and spillage is an every day occurrence. To keep the tank looking as clean as possible Pieter swaps the sand in the display for fresh sand every 3 months. He states very clearly that the sand is purely there for aesthetics and is not part of the biological filtration. His nitrates and phosphates are totally undetectable on any kit you throw at it. This system works, and works well. Running a very successful fireplace

shop and maintaining this tank to this level just isn’t possible for one man. As a

“We hope to one day see it again, hopefully soon; as every time we go back we are absolutely fascinated by this stunning tank.”

result, Pieter employs Richard Westdorp full time to assist in its running. Rich-ard is a great guy who really knows his onions as well as this system, inside and out. Both men talk fondly of this tank and both men should be rightly proud. What they have created and maintain is nothing short of paradise. We would like to thank both guys equally for the guided tour we got and for answering our questions, though it was clear to see that it was no hardship for either party. Seeing this tank face to face and compil-ing this feature was an honour, and we got the distinct feeling that showing it off to us once again was as pleasurable for them as it was for us. We could have spent days not only

looking at this tank but attempting to compile an accurate stocklist. In such a large, busy tank it would have been akin to searching for a needle in a haystack. The charts on this page together with the pictures hopefully give you an indication of some of the stunning inhabitants.

Pieter changes his halide lamps every 6-8 months to ensure that he is getting the most from them, with the delicate stock he has and the colours he maintains, who are we to argue. It’s clearly a regime that works well for him. All lighting times and sequences are controlled by an Aqua Medic lighting computer. If the tank is the heart of the building then the sump room is most certainly the nerve centre. The amount of care and design that has gone into this room beg-gars belief. Water from the display enters through pipework appearing from the ceiling and goes straight into a made-to-measure filter rack thingy. Yes, thingy: a cabinet containing several drawers through which the water flows. These

drawers are fitted with removable drilled trays, each of which is packed with sheets of filter floss which is removed and dis-posed of weekly. It works very well indeed as the sump tank that this contraption sits over is spotless; free of mulm and detritus. If only we mere mortals had the room for such things.

The sump that sits beneath the ‘thingy’ is constructed entirely of fibreglassed ply-wood panels and is split into two separate vats. The one on the left is for water enter-ing the system, the one on the right for the return pump and skimmer feeds. It also houses the heaters and of course a hell of a lot of water. It is into this tank that the frozen food sometimes goes to feed the main display.

Above the main sumps is a 500mg Sander Ozoniser which steadily adds 200mg of ozone per hour. To the right of the sumps stands the monstrous H&S P20 protein skimmer. At over 2 metres tall this is one mean mother of a skimmer. Thankfully, the cup has a self-cleaning head which jet washes itself every 3 hours and rinses directly to the drain. Pieter also employs a large fluidized sand filter on this system: again it’s 2 metres tall and is running round the clock. When we visited Pieter he was just about to rip out his large Deltec calcium reactor in favour of a specially designed one-off construction from Belgium. It was installed a few weeks later and from what we gather should help to maintain his calcium levels at 450ppm, just where

1 Valencienna sexguttata 1 Oxymonacanthus longirostris 8 Chromis Viridis

Corals

LPS:Plerogyra sinuosaEuphyllia ancoraEuphyllia parancoraEuphyllia divisaEuphyllia paradivisaEuphyllia sp.Goniopora stokesiGoniopora sp. (red, blue, green)Fungia spp.Tubastrea sp.

Caulastrea furcata (grey & green)Herpolitha limaxTurbinaria reniformisFavia sp.Favites sp.Physogyra sp.Lobophyllia sp.Pectinia sp.

SPS:Montipora digitataMontipora capricornisMontipora sp.Psammocora contiguaPorites sp.Poccilopora verrucosaSeriatopora hystrix

Seriatopora caliendrumAcropora formosaAcropora granulosaAcropora suharsonoiAcropora jaquelinaeAcropora gemmiferaAcropora humilisAcropora sp.Pavona sp.

Along with:

Tridacna maxima, T. crocea and T. squamosa. Both photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic gorgonians, Capnella sp., Xenia and Anthelia sp

2 Apolemichthys trimaculatus2 Centropyge multifasciatus2 Centropyge loriculus2 Centropyge aurantia

Anthias:52 Tuka2 Tiara4 Parvoritris5 Lori16 Evansi46 Bartlettorum39 Dispar6 Pleurotaenia8 Flavicauda14 Squamipinnis6 Ventralis

Fish Stock

Surgeon Fish:1 Acanthurus achilles1 Naso literatus1 Nao elegans1 Naso flamingii4 Zebrasoma xanthurum4 Paracanthurus hepatus, (yellow belly)2 Zebrasoma rostratum

Angels:2 Apolemichthys xanthopuntatus1 Chaetodontoplus melanosoma1 Pomacanthus imperator1 Holacanthus ciliaris1 Holacanthus africanus

Others:1 Lo upsi 1 Scarus quoyi 2 Amphiprion occelaris 10 Opistognathus aurifrons 1 Halichoeres chrysus 9 Macropharyngdon bipartus 1 Chirrhilabrus Flavidorsalis 1 Chirrhilabrus lineatus1 Gomphosus varius 1 Calloplesios altevelis 2 Pseudochromis fridmani 2 Pseudochromis porphyeus 4 Apogon leptacanthus 1 Salarias 3 Amblyeletris randalli 2 Gobiosama genie