Despite the growing popularity
of the internet, there was still
a demand for good reference
books and one of the most
popular was the fi rst of The Reef
Aquarium series by J. Charles
Delbeek and Julian Sprung
which became the classic refer-
ence of the era.2000’s
The new millennium
started with the big-
gest ever non-event,
the Y2K bug. Over
3,000 people died
in the World Trade
Centre attacks of
9/11 and we said a
fi nal farewell to the
iconic Michael Jack-
son. Thrilling cinema
audiences were The
Lord of the Rings and
Avatar, whilst Harry
Potter was a must
read.Taking pride of place on reefers
bookshelves were ‘The Modern
Coral Reef Aquarium’ by Fossa
and Nilsen, and ‘Corals’ by Eric
Borneman (the latter is still
often regarded as the ultimate
reference for identifying corals).
It would be remiss of me not
to mention the publication of
the fi rst edition of UltraMarine
magazine in December 2006!This was the decade of systems;
the Berlin based system, or
at least variations of it had
become the mainstay of the
hobby and we’d not seen any
signifi cantly, diff erent ap-
proaches for a number of years.
This was about to change. The
Balling system continued toincrease in popularity especially
in smaller aquaria where kalk
stirrers and calcium reactors
were considered overkill due to
limited system demands for cal-
cium and alkalinity. The reactor/
stirrer approach was often seen
as only suitable for experienced
aquarists and this was refl ected
with more people favouringdosing systems.
Some aquarists, having had suc-
cess with carbon source dosing
(vodka/sugar) to reduce nutri-
ents were considering ultra-low
nutrient systems (ULNS). Using
bacteria additions to remove
excessive nutrients these
systems aimed to reduce nitrate
and phosphate to natural sea-water levels, without impacting
on calcium and magnesium.
The Zeovit system was widely
regarded as the fi rst document-
ed ULNS and had much success,
though its apparent com-
plexities and costs prevented it
becoming more popular.
In 2008 Eshan Dashti intro-
duced the Triton system andcreated the company Triton
Reef. Simplistic in defi nition
and focussed on keeping water
parameters close to natural sea-
water levels; it was quite radical
in that it made water changes
redundant. The method relies
on the rather complex and
relatively expensive ICP –OES
(Inductively Coupled Plasma -
Optical Emission Spectrometer)
water testing and analysis that
is carried out by Triton labs.
Based on this analysis aqua-
rists are able to replenish only
those elements that had been
depleted since the previous test
and create a dosing regime to
bring them up to the optimum
values. The system uses a non
standard sump design which in-
corporates cheato that is grown
and harvested for nitrate con-
trol and high intensity lighting.
There is widespread evidence
of success of the system with
many spectacular SPS dominat- UM issue number 1 cover, nearly 10 years ago!