Why a Biotope?

Why a Biotope?

Between 2000 and 2004 I ran a fairly traditional 530 litre reef aquarium with a small under-tank sump, maintaining a broad collection of LPS and soft corals. In the aquarium was a Deep Sand Bed (DSB) held above a plenum, and a wall of live rock running along the back. It seemed to be successful but by 2004 I was intent on upgrading so I could keep more demanding corals, and this was the excuse for me to fundamentally rethink my setup and objectives.

A biotope aquarium

If you look at many hobbyist SPS aquariums you will find they often contain large numbers of different species of fish and corals, from all corners of the globe, and from very different parts of the natural reef, living unnaturally cheek by jowl in a blaze of different colours. And it is hard to resist the urge when visiting a shop for 'just one more' coral or 'one more' fish without considering where it actually came from. But we risk ending up with an unconnected polka-dot collection of fish and corals, making for very unnatural reefs. Of course such setups can still be very beautiful and successful aquariums, but I wanted to adopt a different approach for my new reef. I decided to try and have some kind of theme to my aquarium and opted to try and set-up a biotope aquarium, modelled on a specific section of a coral reef.

biotope (plural biotopes) n small environmentally distinct area: a small area with a distinct set of environmental conditions that supports a particular ecological community of plants and animals

I had been inspired by the book Reef Secrets by Alf Nilson and Svenn Fosså, which describes the challenges and satisfaction that can come from trying to recreate a specific ecological niche in a marine reef aquarium. I reasoned that having some underlying rationale to the stocking would also reduce the scope for succumbing to expensive temptations when visiting my local stores. And I was attracted to the idea of having fewer species of fish and coral in the aquarium, but more heavily represented, which I thought could create a stronger visual impact.

A Hawaiian biotope

Having already reduced the stocking options available to me by going down the biotope route I then cut them even more severely by deciding the biotope would be a Hawaiian reef. I admit I simply did not appreciate just how much of a difference that one decision would make when I started out.

Creating a Hawaiian biotope aquarium seemed to be new territory - I couldn't find anyone else who had seriously attempted it. Even the London Aquarium's supposedly 'Hawaiian' display contained numerous fish never found around the islands, and they hadn't even tried to stock appropriate corals or invertebrates.

I therefore decided to run a pilot first, to see if it would be possible to create something more authentic. In setting up that pilot I faced some significant challenges. Due to the geographic isolation of the Hawaiian Islands they are much less diverse than other reefs, especially those in the neighbouring Indo-Pacific. For example, in Hawaii it has been stated that there are just 52 species of stony corals (though Veron's Corals of the World suggests the presence of more than 70), whereas in the western Pacific island of Palua there are well over 300. The corals that are found in Hawaii tend to be less specialized and are therefore distributed more widely about its reefs, although a relatively few species still tend to dominate. Given the small number of indigenous Hawaiian species, finding appropriate coral species in the UK to populate the aquarium has therefore been particularly difficult.

However, that shortage of coral species encouraged me to adopt a different approach to the aquascaping which turned out to be at least as visually pleasing as more traditional approaches. I therefore decided to try to replicate the approach pioneered in that biotope pilot on a larger scale in this new system - you will find further details in the Aquascaping page.