NLS Disruptions

Due to the new labelling laws in the EC imports of NLS (Spectrum) feeds have been delayed. Whilst we carry a fair stock of most of the range we are suffering with the popular 600g Cichlid Formula tubs. The 300g size will be out of stock shortly. We ask our customers to try other Cichlid feeds in the NLS range such as Medium Fish formula (2mm) or the Thera range which we carry in stock including the 600g size tubs.
A new import will shortly be in the UK so this is a temporary glitch. Our apologies for this. The EC seem to want to make things as difficult as they can for businesses with constant meddling in animal feeds.
Don't forget the charity auction is getting near - 4th December 2011 in Redditch.

New Cichlid Flake

This week we had a new flake called 'Cichlid Flake'. This is made up from Krill, Mysis shrimp & Artemia etc. A flake which is very useful to any omnivorous fish. All the ingredients are made up fresh in the USA so no harmful additions are in the mix.
As you can see from the photo flakes made up in the US are generally quite thick. We specialise in these type of flakes. The range now is quite extensive & compliments the sticks & wafers we have also expanded on over the past months.

New Labelling Legislation

The EC have once again helped us out (?) with a change in how labels on pet feeds should appear.
Over the industry millions of labels are having to be dumped with basically a few word changes -
'Ingredients' should now be replaced with 'composition'
'Analysis' or 'typical analysis' should now be replaced with 'Analytical Constituents'
'Ash' should now be replaced with 'crude ash' .
WHY ? What benefits can this have for all the money we pour into the EC.
We obviously have to comply with this but they do give a window to get things sorted out.

New Foods & Update

Spirulina is something we sell a lot of particularly in flakes so we thought about mixing this with garlic flakes particularly for Rift Lake cichlids & this has been doing well. We now have new flakes from the US which are blended in the mix with these ingredients + another Spirulina flake mixed with other vegetables. I think we are probably the best online supplier now with our range of vegetable feeds.

Freeze Dried Blackworm

We now sell a lot of Australian freeze dried blackworm & have increased our order with the producer. As we buy more we can get a little knocked off the price we pay so we are passing this saving onto our customers. We have dropped the price on this product by 10% on this shipment.

Holiday Dates

I also do work in Malta's history & need to visit once a year. The site will close down from August 26th to September 5th. Last posting date August 25th. First mailing following this 6th September.
Apologies for disruption.

Back from holiday & update

Back from a break in Tenerife & ended up hunting lizards to photograph. The main reason for going was to visit my new grandson Tyler who is living on the island. Apologies for disruption to the order flow but I had to do it.
Whenever I take a break I come back to a huge backload of orders & always find stocks hit in unexpected areas. Busy restocking at the moment.
New items always being looked at & I hope to expand the site this summer with more useful items.
Overseas orders continue to expand. A lot of reorders which shows the feeds are popular.
Thank you all for your support.

New Foods

We filled a gap in the freeze dried area by adding Tubifex & Brine Shrimp. Also, we have a new Pacific Krill which a lot more orange. This one is nice & soft & lends itself to be crushed up for young fish. Or feed it whole to larger fish.
We have had samples of a soft Krill pellet which looks nice. Hopefully we should have these in on the next shipment.
We are keen to source our feeds away from China as we have heard reports of chemical additives being put in some feeds. The above new foods are all sourced from the USA where they are grown & processed. Obviously buying like this is more expensive but we try to get the best quality of foods worldwide.
If you want to buy cheap foods try e-Bay. We are amazed so many people list cheap bags of food. I hear the net is closing on those trading without a business name & tax accounts. This has got to be good news as who knows how old the foods are. We trade legally & are VAT registered as well. If we have to pay taxes why not some of these sellers?
I also saw someone splitting buckets of Tetra Prima. Tetra take a dim view of this & have prosecuted in some cases. We do not split any named brand foods. All our flakes are specially made up & we have the rights to trade these under our brand name.

Update - May 2011

With so much going on the blog seems to take a back seat.
Since the last post we have continued to keep plodding along. We have not put coldwater feeds onto the site before but this year we found some great product & decided to offer it. New feeds always take a while to get off the ground so this is work in progress.
Postage is a real headache to get right on the site. As an average it works out about right but some orders are sent out over postal cost & some under. Generally we put in extra feed weight where a customer pays over the odds.
The new increase in postage costs is quite large but we decided not to put costs up this time round.
It seems everything is going up with banks & the government charging 3 times for the same thing. This mentality has filtered down to Parcelforce in the UK where imports are having extra charges put on for 'handling fees' which impact on the cost of imports outside the EC.
We have been lucky in getting small import duty amounts but now are seeing amounts of 10% leveed against imports from the USA. Of course this has to impact on the cost of goods we bring in & some items we are having to seriously look at. We hate having to increase prices but in some cases we are close to making no profit which is not good in any business.
Freight costs, taxes, duties & hidden costs are stacking up to make imports outside the EC very expensive.
Our customers expect top quality feeds from us. Businesses these days are up against more & more charges in importing & it really is a fight to keep prices down.
Dainichi are still not able to send to the EC. This has been going on for over a year now. In the same vein the US are now saying Artemia is not fit to feed to fish be it for food or ornamental. This is something brewing in the US & lawyers are probably going to come out of it smelling of roses. How aquaculture businesses are going to survive in all this remains to be seen.
Is the world going crazy with beaurocracy & red tape. When will common sense prevail?

New feed Import In

We are always on the look out for new feeds & this month we invested in a small shipment from another source. I was very impressed in the quality of these samples & lost no time in getting them on the site. We hope to bring in more flake types from this source shortly.
We now have a really nice selection of flakes. We have only blended the green & black flakes so far & these sell as fast as I can package them.
If you want a special blend we can easily make it up for you - just drop me an e-mail. The combinations of flakes are limitless & young growing fish can be catered for with specific foods to their needs.
New items now in are -
Algae Wafers - The colour of these is really deep. I tried to capture this on camera but it's not quite as good as they look. I hate 'colouring up' food photos. They are the best spirulina wafers I have ever seen. Shaped like small leaves with each 'leaf' weighing approx 1grm. These are a chunky feed.






Vegetable Wafers - The make up of these wafers is impressive with a whole load of very useful ingredients. Look at this for a list - Wheat Germ Meal, Spirulina, Alfalfa Meal, Decalcium Phosphate, Carrot, celery, Beet, Parsley, Lettuce, Water cress, Spinach, Brewers Yeast, Soy Lecithin, Pea, Dried Kelp, Shrimp Meal, Krill Meal.


Cichlid Crisps. These are mini wafers. I don't have any Cichlids at the moment but my catfish are hovering them up. They are a sinking wafer so ideal for catfish.






Angel Flake - Specially formulated for the demands of Angelfish. This is an unusual flake packed with all sorts of flakes.










Immune Booster Flake - An unusual find. This flake is used in fish with disease problems or maybe fish under quarantine. It contains beta glucan which is known to boost the fishes internal immune system to help them fight off disease & recover faster.
We do not recommend this as a daily diet. Once now & again is OK. Over use will weaken its effectiveness when needed if they succumb to disease.



Egg Yolk Flake - This is a great flake which really smells of eggs. Rich yellow colour it's ideal to crunch up & feed young growing fish or to add to a staple diet in small quantities.

New EC Postage

We receive a lot of orders from mainland EC countries & are keen to attract more. Postage is a little more than UK rates which the shopping cart adds to each order. In the past we asked customers from these countries to contact us for a postal amount. This was a hassle for our customers & caused us more time to work things out individually.

From now on all customers from European countries (classed as Europe by Royal Mail) can use the shopping cart buttons without contacting us. We are sure this will be better for our customers in Europe & hopefully attract more business.
The only restriction to this is the weight of the packet which must be a maximum of 2kg. This is because Air Mail postal rates rise dramatically over this.
The Babelfish online translator is very good. This is built into the site. If you want to see what the site looks like in Chinese or Russian have a play around with it.
Dainichi update - We have been exchanging e-mails & the USDA which approve goods for export to the EU are still dragging their feet with the permit. This time it's the krill ingredient. What is really crazy is the USDA have approved the source as fit for use.
The whole EC situation on fish feeds imported into the EC is getting a little crazy & this beaurocracy is going to get worse with new changes coming into force this April.
Dainichi are doing everything they can to renew their permit.
Meanwhile stocks of Cichlid foods are getting extremely low & most are now out. If you need these foods I would advise buying them up now.

New Year Catch up

It's been a few weeks since the last blog. Christmas & New Year have come & gone. Happy New Year to all our customers. We really appreciate your e-mails & orders.
Last year we had a fairly quiet Christmas period due to the recession but this year has been non stop with orders every day except Christmas day. We thank you all for supporting us.
As we are VAT registered we have had to put prices up by the 2.5% increase. The radio has been saying many retailers are going to use this to increase prices further. At TA we have only increased our prices by the 2.5% VAT increase & have not 'sneaked' in subtle increases here & there.
For a 100g bag of our granule this is only 8p extra & 77p on a big pouch of Siberian Brine Shrimp eggs so it's not so bad really.
Sales after the rise have increased if anything especially to mainland EC destinations.
The charity auction has been booked for June 5th 2011 at the same venue. We had to cancel the December do due to the cold weather. Some photos are on the auction page. As always click the yellow box top left of the home page to get into the auction page.
This year the BKA & BCA are holding auctions at the venue. In all we hope to host at least 5 auctions this year.
New products had to be put on the backburner this month after David & Nick sent me a nice letter asking for a donation to HM Revenue & Customs. I really appreciated it dropping through the letter box on Christmas Eve but that's the way it goes.
New products & new packaging are planned for February. As always we are continually looking to try new things out.
With more trade orders coming in from the EC we are keen to get all our products in retailer packaging this year. This will take some investment but should be completed this Spring.
Once again - thank you all for your interest in TA products. We look forward to supplying fresh feeds for your fish in 2011.