By Jon Brydon & Scott Booth.All images © Scott Booth, Keith Man m e e t s . . .R o n H e s s i n gWelcome back to another feature of

‘UltraMarine meets’ where this issue we have travelled over to Holland to meet Ron Hessing. For those of you that live in caves/up trees/in shopping trolleys [delete as appropriate] you may well be thinking ‘Ron who?’ Don’t worry, we won’t hold it against you...

Ron is a much respected reefer from the Netherlands, born in Utrecht some time in the sixties, -or was it seventies? You know what, it doesn’t matter. All you need to know is he knows his stuff, shares it

regularly with fellow hobbyists around the world, and makes a mean cup of coffee.

Ron is most widely recognised for his mag-azine writing, his internet site and being a guest speaker at various events around the world; but how did it all happen? Ron Hessing: I have always been very interested in fish and corals. As a small boy I used to go to a local pet shop every Satur-day without fail. They had a bar area in the centre of the store that was surrounded by aquariums. I used to visit for several hours

and enjoy a drink and a sandwich from the bar. As I grew up and got older I began to take my girlfriend at the time along there, we’d have coffee and sandwiches and ad-mire all the beautiful aquariums together, and it was incredible. Sadly though it has since shut down, but that girlfriend is now my wife! UltraMarine: So that’s what sparked the interest then? RH: Yes very much so. How I ended up getting involved is when my now

parents-in-law emigrated to the Dutch Antilles, Curacao, in the Caribbean. This meant that we are now able to visit them usually 3 times a year. The first time we went out there and I went snor-kelling... WoW!!! I thought to myself ‘I must get myself an aquarium’.

Later that same year I met a guy who is now my very good friend Andre. He owned a fish shop and I asked him how much it would cost me to set up a marine aquarium. He told me that to do it properly was going to cost at least 10,000 Gilda; This was 1990, I was young, I didn’t have that kind of money and so I started reading. I read and read and spoke to as many people as I could, constantly learning and finally 9 years later in 1999 I bought my first tank, a trigon 350 bow-fronted corner tank.

Even though I had read so many books and had spoken to so many people I still made every mistake there is. It was a massive lesson for me, and the biggest thing I learnt? Balance! You can have 15 fish, the system works perfectly then add the 16th, tip the balance, the system can no longer cope and things start to die. Finding the balance is the key to it all. UM: So you worked with the Trigon for what, 5 years? RH: No, not at all, I had that tank for maybe 1 year before upgrading to a fully custom made system. It was 2m x 1m x 1m viewable from 3 sides as a room di-vider. It was an awesome system; I loved that tank dearly and ran it for 6 years before stripping it in 2006! The biggest thing I learnt from this system was stabil-ity. I am a firm believer that an aquarium should never be started with SPS corals. I think you should start with soft corals and filter feeders for 1 year, as so much happens in a tank over a year that we just cannot see or test for. only after the tank has been stable and running for a year can you start to alter the system, and make it more specialised.

For me this was Stony corals. My tank endured a 6 month turnover period after that initial year, I removed the soft corals that I didn’t want to keep and added Stony corals in their place. I wanted to keep some soft corals but in the end you will always end up with chemical warfare between soft and hard corals, and soft will always win!

MarineUltra

UM: And that takes us up to 2006. You did more before 2006 than just run a successful reef tank? RH: I had made many friends in the hobby by then. once I had an aquarium set up, my wife and I would attend to my friend Andre’s shop, who I men-tioned earlier. one of the things that irritate me is those people who complain about the price of corals. Now, I go to Andre’s shop and these days I take my wife and my kids. others arrive with their families. We will stop and talk to each other and other customers for many hours. A whole Saturday is used up in one visit, meeting and having fun. At the end of this day I might buy a 100 Euro coral, but my family has had a day’s entertainment: it’s little price to pay. We have been going every Saturday for many years, always speaking to people. It was back in 2003, that people started to say that they liked talking to me as I had a way of putting things into an easy to understand language. Andre suggested that he organise a beginner’s day in his shop so that I could talk to an audience. I was suspicious and thought nobody would be interested. Andre was confident though and said he would get it arranged.

3 months later and the Saturday arrived; I talked about simple things, aquascaping a tank, phosphates, break-ing it all down into really simple terms. I would have been more than happy to see 20-30 attending the beginner’s day, but in actual fact in excess of 230 people arrived, it was incredible! Andre was so confident he had 180 chairs ready, but we had far more people than chairs. People came for the beginning, and then stopped for the whole thing. Everyone enjoyed it. This is the day I look back on and call it the start of the roller coaster. UM: Roller coaster? RH: Yes, definitely. Attending that meeting were some of the big names in Dutch fish keeping. The governing body of the Dutch fish keeping societies were there and liked what they heard. They asked me if I would be willing to speak at society events around Holland, which I did. I then got asked if I would be will-ing to write for Dutch magazines which

“ I would have been more than happy to see 20 -30 attending the beginner ’s day, but in actual fact in excess of 230 people arrived, it was incredible! This is the day I look back on and call it the star t of the roller coaster.”

I did. on the back of this I was asked to write for the Internet on zeewaterforum.org, which I did!

I travelled all over, visiting reef-ers, taking pictures of their systems then writing it up for others to enjoy. If I heard of an incredible system in Switzerland, I’d get in the car and drive to Switzerland. Nobody in Holland at this time were bringing stories in from outside Holland. one tank I had heard much about was David Saxby’s reef in London. I waited at Andre’s store one time to catch the D-D aquarium solutions representative when he was delivering stock. I asked if he could get me in contact with David Saxby to visit his aquarium. He said he would see what he could do and 3 weeks later I had a telephone number.

I will never forget that first time I called and spoke to David’s assistant. She said ‘Mr Hessing please hold, I’ll just put you through’. I was so scared but he was really nice, invited me over. I drove to London, it was a really busy day for traffic and the first time I had ever driven on the left side of a road. I arrived at David’s house and he invited me in. He asked if I was just a photog-rapher or whether I was also a reefer. I reached into my pocket and produced pictures of my 2m reef tank; he smiled broadly, slapped me on the back and was really interested in speaking with me.

once I had posted the 15 page article on the Internet I got invited over to the D-D seminar in Birmingham. I met with Joe Yaiullo, Helmut Debelius and the late, great, Greg Schiemer amongst

others, then after this event David offers to take us out to dinner in London. There I am sat eating dinner with the likes of Saxby, Debelius... it is still the best reefing evening I have ever spent.

Having met Joe Yuillio I then get invited out to meet him as he was speaking in New York. I go of course and when there I meet Anthony Calfo and Julian Sprung. Anthony had not been to Manhattan before and neither had I. Anthony arranged for some local reefers to take us around and give us the tour; it was fantastic! Through meeting

others in New York I then returned to the USA to talk at Boston. So as I say, a roller coaster, I now talk at 12-14 society meets per year across Holland and Belgium.

UM: And then last year you decided that this wasn’t enough and you decided to host your own. What possessed you to do such a thing?

RH: Well I have been very fortunate in where I have been and what I have seen, so I decided it was time that the Netherlands have something of its own,

to allow my fellow countrymen to enjoy what I have enjoyed. I was very nervous about the numbers, but provided I could get about 150 people, I would class it a success. I had Anthony Calfo come over to talk to us; he is so knowledgeable on so many subjects and has such an easy way of putting his knowledge across.

Everybody who attended loved it, and loved how it was interactive. It was well worth the effort and expense that I put in. That event was funded by Andre, Danny and myself. In the USA their talks and meetings are more commercial, and

A b o v e :A n o v e r v i e w o f R o n ’ s F a n t a s t i c h o m e s y s t e m

it works for them; but here in Europe, I think that it has to be free for reefers to attend, this is why we did it. This year though, I am hoping to host our meeting in September but it is going to cost a lot more, so I am probably going to be look-ing to get sponsorship. As long as it is free to attendees it will be ok.

UM: Can we be cheeky and ask for an ex-clusive on who you may have attending?

RH: of course, ha ha! But you must understand these are not confirmed 100%. There is still much to plan but I am asking Anthony Calfo, Joe Yaiullo, Mike Palletta and maybe Eric Borneman...Anthony has also suggested his fiancée Christine Wil-liams: she is a specialist in fish diseases. As lovely as it would be to hear her talk, I am worried that she may be too advanced for what is a more open, easier-to-digest event.

UM: So moving back to you. You work in software development and support, but we are wondering why aren’t you a profes-sional in the marine trade?

RH: I love my job dearly. I have worked at the same company for many years and hold a great position there. Like my aquarium I like balance; I have my family time, my hobby time and my work time and all mix really well. I don’t do any-thing in my life that I don’t enjoy. In the USA, again, there are more opportunities to work professionally in reef keeping circles, but here in Europe it is not so easy, not so secure. My job is very secure and so I am happy where I am, doing what I

do for a living, visiting reefkeepers and writing articles for magazines, and my site marineaquarium.nl which receives about 6000 hits a month. I don’t know if this is good or not but it keeps me happy. It all keeps me happy.

UM: We are glad you brought your website up as it’s a firm favourite of ours, especially as you write many articles in English.

RH: I write a lot of stuff in Dutch but try to put on as much as I can in English as I get more English speaking readers obviously. In 2005 I paid a visit to Martin Lakin in Rochester, another guy I met through David Saxby. He took me on a tour of aquariums around the London area which was very nice. on this tour I met a guy called Nick Jones. Nick is a great guy, when I write an English article I send it to him for editing, to make it more readable for the English readers. I send him an arti-cle and in two days maximum it is back to me, improved and ready for release. He paid me a nice compliment; every time I receive an article back he tells me that he has had to edit less and less, so my English must be improving. We’d like to thank Ron and his family

for donating their time (and coffee) to let us come and visit them at their home in Holland. We’d also like to thank God that once more we managed to avoid being eaten by Ron’s Bull Mastiff ‘Mack’ -a big stupid beast that for no apparent reason takes exception to anybody sporting a laptop, camera or a pulse.

We have visited Ron in the past, outside of this magazine, and can honestly tell you that he is a man that will literally do anything for you, he goes out of his way for his fellow hobbyist. That said, I notice that yet again neither of us left with a frag of that stunning Acropora Florida, but I guess that just gives us another excuse for a return journey. We also attended his first ever reef-keeping event last year and enjoyed it tremendously.

The English spoken talks out-numbered the Dutch ones and the whole trip was very worth-while. No doubt as we get closer to the time Ron will be releasing dates and fixtures for this year. If you fancy a weekend abroad with a bunch of nutters talking reefs we urge you to attend: hotels are cheap, travel expenses can be shared if you fill a car with fellow reefing friends, and of course as he states above, the event itself is free. Furthermore, Ron is also giving a number of talks on reefing at this year’s Reefkeepers Weekender at Pontins in Pakefield between Fri-day the 29th of August and Monday the 1st of September. Joining him will be Anthony Calfo and other speakers. Yet another event which cannot be missed! Call 01502 502 900 or visit Ultimatereef.net for more details.

If there is one lesson that can be learnt from speaking to Ron it is to get out there as much as possible and talk with your fellow hobbyist. It’s more than just meeting like minded folk, it’s about the passing on of information, comparing experiences, making friends and contacts. We will continue to bring you the musings from other prominent figures in Reef-keeping circles and we hope you enjoy them. In the meantime, we look forward to bringing you the next issue and hope to one day meet you at one of the many reefing events that are held these days.