If it hasn't been done already I agree that it would be nice if there was a link to this in the Uk Directory to save those of us that are north of the border going through the whole list.
So here are my reviews:
Acorn,
Donibristle Industrial Estate,
Dalgety Bay.
Variety: 6/10
No more than 20 Tropical tanks and 10 Coldwater, No Marine tanks.
Tropical: Mostly Tetras, Barbs, Danio's and Livebearers. They usually have a few nice Gourami and a small selection of Cichlids, usually Kribensis and a few Mbuna's surprisingly enough to me. Occasionally one or two pleco's but I don't recall ever seeing corys, hoplo's or otto's. I have never seen any shrimp, loaches, crabs or frogs either. Also they stock a few others, alge eaters (the aggressive kind), sharks etc but nothing too out of the ordinary that you wouldnt expect to find at a small fish shop.
Coldwater: Your run of the mill Goldfish, Koi, Moors, Fantails and shubumpkins (spelling). Also occasionally have Apple Snails in coldwater.
Quality: 7/10
I have never bought any fish from here that have died in a short time after purchase. The gourami are usually nicely coloured however the rest of the fish are distinctly average but most are usually in good health and they are quite good at identifying disease and quarantining tanks. Wouldn't expect to find wild caughts here, hehe.
Service: 5/10
As Glod says there is a woman who takes care of the fish section of these shops and when she is not there then it is a gamble as to the quality of service you will get as the shop caters to most common pets and does not specialise in fish. Most of the staff are friendly enough and polite.
There is no information in the fish room about the fish and the identification of their fish is not 100% reliable. Some of what is sold, some of the plecs etc, are not entirely suitable for the type of novices that frequent the shop and you sometimes see foot long plecs returned to the shop. The staff don't really take much time to inform or warn you about suitability of tank size and tank mates
.
However they do seem to be more than happy to take fish back off you in an emergency and will also buy certain species whether that is because you want to try something different and wish to sell the originals back to them or if you successfully breed and wish to sell juveniles.
Furthermore, sometimes what is listed in the tank is not always reflective of what is actually in there which I guess you would put down to the fact that the woman that specialises in the fish is only in the shop one or two days a week and they might have had more fish come in or all of their stock in one species sold since she was last there. That just makes it a little harder for proper newbies to identify what they have bought though.
I've never seen dead fish in the tanks in the Dalgety Bay Acorn store though and they will take the time to catch
exactly the one you want if you only have your mind set on one individual in particular. Which is nice
.
Plants: 7/10
They usually have a few healthy plants for sale and I can't identify all of what they have but among others are java fern, duck weed, cabomba and the asian varieties (forget the name of the genus or family), some large broad leaf plants that I can't identify and some small leaf or grass varieties. All come with lead weights wrapped around a peice of foam to protect the stems from the metal I guess. Unless they are just about to get new plants in, then as I say, they are generally pretty healthy without dieing leaves/stems but the only gripe I have about them is that they are all kept in coldwater so this may be a shock to them when you move them to tropical water but I'm no expert on plants and like any excuse to pass the buck for my poor performance in keeping healthy plants
.
Dry Goods: 6/10
Just the basics, a few varieties of food (mostly Waltham and tetra) and some intrapet water treatments, a few pond supplies and some basic ornaments, gravels (don't think I've seen bogwood, natural rock, sand substrates or plant substrates on offer however they always stock the hideous neon coloured varieties of gravel, hehe) spare bulbs etc. They have everything you would need to setup a tank and keep one but nothing out of the ordinary or too specific and unfortunately for our local shops you can find most of this stuff cheaper online which I have to admit is what I do.
Overall: 7/10
I would recommend this shop to anyone that wasnt after anything specific but I would advise them to have done their own research first or at least take the first Baensch Atlas with them. I buy plants and occasionally some fish from here, I also occasionally sell fish to the shop and as I say I can find the dry goods cheaper online and there are less ethical quanderies to consider when buying inanimate objects by mail
.
Also, I was there yesterday for the first time so I would like to give my review of Ultimate Aquatics even though it has already been done.
Ultimate Aquatics,
Prestonhall Industrial Estate,
Cupar.
Variety: 8/10
They weren't lieing when they boast online that they have 500 tanks, if they have less then it is not many although when I was there yesterday they had a lot that were empty and a good few were quarantine tanks.
Marine: One wall of the fish room was dedicated to marine fish although as I was not there for marine fish, have no interest in keeping them at the moment and was in a hurry so I just skipped past them and didnt get an accurate count of the tanks, at least 20-50 though.
Tropical: These make up the majority of their tanks, easily over 300 but as I say not all of them have fish in them (maybe 1/3 were empty when i was there). In terms of variety: all the usual suspects and more but as one of the assistants informed me it is a bit of a gamble what stock they will get in. However with that said I wasn't overly impressed but that is probably not because the selection wasnt impressive but that they did not have the individual species of certain families of fish that I am interested in and would have chosen to buy, which is obviously subjective and nothing to base an objective opinion on. In particular, they had very nice selections of catfish and discus but the 2 galaxy rasbora they had left were unimpressive to say the least. I would be surprised if you couldnt get wild caught fish from here but I didnt see any that jumped out and were obviously wild caught. They had Amano and Cherry shrimp and some variety that was a mountain something or other (I forget exactly as I wasnt interested in them) but I did not notice any other alternatives to fish for the tropical tanks. The only thing to note that I would have expected but did not see in such a large selection were betta's. Still, an excellent and varied selection for sure.
Coldwater: Again like the Marine I just skipped these and couldnt even make a guesstimate at how many tanks they have allocated to them.
Quality: 8/10
Again I'll have to skip over the Marine and Coldwater fields and move back to their Tropical tanks. As I said I wasn't blown away by the selection even though they had a large variety of Tropical fish and must have had 100-200 different species easily and probably nearer 300 in the tropical tanks. The fish all seemed healthy and most were nice specimens but I didnt see any that were so spectacular that they just struck me as being something really special. The only trouble I noticed was in their tank of Oscars, a few of them were having a go at each other but otherwise I was very impressed that in so many tanks there were no casualties floating or half dead fish limping around.
I purchased 6 white cloud mountain minnows and 4 amano shrimp, they have been in the tank for about 30 hours now and all appear healthy, the white clouds are very nicely coloured. Also they will guarantee any fish purchased for 48 hrs.
Service: 9/10
In the fish room they had a colour code of red/amber/green to identify the aggressiveness of each fish which would be very useful to someone who hadnt done their homework previously or who were new to the hobby. Also I liked that they had a few closeup analysis on certain fish like a 'fish of the month' etc to give you some more information. I knew what my options were and what would be suitable in my tank before going so I didn't have to ask anyone for information about my purchases. The minnows are peaceful and so are Amano Shrimp so I can't say if they would go so far as to warn you and possibly not sell you aggressive/unsuitable fish if they thought you were not going to house them responsibly.
They had at least 4 members of staff working when I was there on Friday morning so they had plenty of people to help out and I'm sure at least one would have made an attempt to answer any query I had. Plus, I was quite smitten with the cute girl that was helping me out.
My mind was busy constructing some sort of
tasteful joke about offering to buy her and take her home but she was concentrating so much on catching the fish I didnt want to interrupt and risk getting slapped by her wet hands.
Plants: 5/10
Not sure if it was just that they had had the tank of plants they were selling for some time or not but you would do well to take their advice from the website and just buy from Greenline if not. That said I did buy a tray of their java moss and it is the proper java moss (Vesicularia Dubyana).
Dry Goods: 9/10
They had a whole room of the warehouse floor, couldnt guess to the actual size in square feet but it was impressive to say the least, dedicated to dry goods and I'm confident they would have at least one option of any upgrade you were looking for and I assume they will cater to everything you need for a marine setup. Also they will cut tanks to the exact size you want. The only thing I bought/paid much attention too was the rocks and bogwood, bought a 1kg peice of bogwood (roughly 10x4x6) for £5. Wasn't very impressed with their rocks though, they seemed to be too 'fancy' for me and they were quite considerable chunks too (I was after some plain looking slate chunks or perhaps some dull granite).
Overall: 8/10
I'll definately be back to check out their stock again the next time I'm thinking on restocking or setting up a new tank as it has a very large and impressive selection of everything except the plants. Also, remember it was my first time in the shop and I didnt have a chance to give every section the attention it deserved. I'd recommend it to anyone that asks though.