Congratulations to Andrzej Niewiarowski for taking the ZEOvit DTOQ title which will again go to a Pole. This SPS dominated oligotrophic reef tank is 6.5′ long and aside from using the ZEOvit method of nutrient management, the back room is brimming with a bevy of all the latest high tech T5 lighting, KorallenZucht skimmer, ZEOreactor and so on. Besides having some really beautiful corals, you have to admit that this tank is seriously lacking an aesthetic eye. Surely the n00bs will fawn all over all the pretty colors but look at it; It’s just about the most homogeneous hill of coral we’ve ever seen! We promise we didn’t wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and we give props to the technical beauty of the coral’s colors but not only is there absolutely no focal point in the reefscape, there is way more equipment visible in the tank than any reefer who prides themselves on aesthetics would allow. That junk might have flown back in 2002-2004 when they were all figuring out how all this ZEO-voodoo works but this is a new decade and we have higher expectations from one of the 4 best ZEOvit tanks of the year. Big congratulations to you Andrzej for some truly beautiful corals but if you spend just a little time looking at the champion aquascapes of the ADA international aquatic plant layout competitions and their extreme sense of beauty, depth, and absence of visible equipment, you’ll see what we are talking about. For more information on the first DTOQ of 2010 visit the page on ZEOvit and let’s hope that the judges incorporate some additional criteria into picking out next quarter’s winner. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this aquascape and feel free to tell us if we are being overly harsh but is it too much to ask that a reefscape be built without the use of a ruler or level?
