Where Do You Get The Slightly Different, Rarer Fish Species...

Many Fishkeepers on this Forum seem to own rare and facinating fish, but the local aquatic stores near me never have what I'm looking for... Where do people get their incredible fish... I know people say that they simply ask their Aquatics store to order them, but mine are not willing to do this... I really do not want to buy them from online ( you might not get what you want ), but can anyone ( as a last resort ) tell me an excellent website for the slightly rarer and different fish species...


Any recemmendations are welcome... ( by the way, I live in UK, so an American website will be of little use )...
Trimar (http://www.trimar.co.uk/) seems to be place suggested for mail order. Failing that wheresbouts are you in the UK?

Gordon
 
Trimar in Cornwall and Wholesale Tropicals in London both do a delivery service. A good resource for finding out who has what is the tropicalfishfinder website. Wholesale Tropicals have their stocklist on that, as do lots of other shops; for Trimar you need to check out their website.
Another resource might be a specialist cichlid forum. That's how I got my rare livebearers, by using a specialist forum.
 
Many Fishkeepers on this Forum seem to own rare and facinating fish, but the local aquatic stores near me never have what I'm looking for... Where do people get their incredible fish... I know people say that they simply ask their Aquatics store to order them, but mine are not willing to do this... I really do not want to buy them from online ( you might not get what you want ), but can anyone ( as a last resort ) tell me an excellent website for the slightly rarer and different fish species...


Any recemmendations are welcome... ( by the way, I live in UK, so an American website will be of little use )...

So if your nearest lfs will not order what you want, try another lfs or go further afield. That's what I had to do. 2 of the 4 lfs are unhelpful and won't order in a fish I want even if I offer to pay for it before they order, but 2 will so those get my custom.
Personally I don't have anything rare in my tank , but the yoyo loaches were hard to find and had to be ordered specially for me.If you offer to pay up front, you will find lfs may order for you. If they don't know you well, they may fear that they will be stuck with a fish nobody else wants if you don't come back to buy it once it has been ordered. Where are you in the UK? If you fill in your profile people can see immediately where you are and be able to advise you as to your best lfs close to you.
 
My advice would be to go right round the M25 to Wildwoods in Enfield..... they will probably have what you want, or if they dont have something you do..

Ben
 
Thanks... I may try using Tri Mar... They have what I want there and it sounds like they have good quality stock...

8)
 
I have heard mixed opinions on Trimar, but some people swear by them.... Personally I would rather choose the specimin of fish if i am looking for rare or interesting things..... You might find that some are rather nicer than others, this is particularly true of plecs, catfish and cichlids..

Ben
 
Trimar hasnt had much of interest in recent years, mind you i suppose that depends on what you are looking for.

Very few local fish stores carry anything other than the every day "bread and butter" species of fish, they are after all a business there to make money and these are the fish that sell easily and have low maintainance costs for the shop. To find more unusual and rare fish you have to travel to the stores which specialise in this area (unless of course you are lucky enough to find you live near one of them) From the top of my head i can name four such shops, Wildwoods http://www.wildwoods.co.uk/ and Wholesale Tropicals (both in the London area) and Wharf Aquatics and Pier Aquatics (both up north) all of which have excellent reputations for importing and selling fish which are otherwise not seen in the trade, Wildwoods even offer a wishlist service where you can ad the fish you want to their data base via email and if they come up on a stocklist they will order them in and notify you.

There are also a few mail order specialists such as Tropical Imports http://www.tropical-imports.co.uk/index.htm which only stock the more unusual species of fish and are usually a little bit cheaper as they dont have retail outlets.
 
There is a newer one in Chesterfield called Mill Garden Centre who I called in to see last week and had a brief chat with the manager and they are trying to get more unusual species in. They're not my bag so I struggle to remember what I saw, all I remember were the Zebra plecs and the pacman catfish (at £595 :eek: )

Probably not worth a trip up t'north on it's own, but it's only another 20 mins ( one more junction of the M1) or so up from Wharf, so you can combine the 2 shops on 1 trip.

Arfie
 
Ok... thanks for replies... I'll have to think about what I'm going to do ( lots of possibilities )!!!
 

Most reactions

Back
Top