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.

New Products In

At last the new granules are in & starting to go out. We were pleased our Astax granule manufacturer made these up for us. The Spirulina granule is going to be a good addition to our feed range & will be a great feed for veggie fish.
Available in 2 sizes - 5,8 & 12.







Cichlid granule is available in 2 grades of 1.2mm & 3mm. This is specially formulated for non veggie Cichlids with all the benefits of best growth rates used in the farming & rearing of Tilapia. This is a specialised granule for ornamental fish.







Discus Granule looks really rich. Although I don't have any Discus at the moment I will be sending out some samples to Discus breeders for tests. I have fed it to wild Corydoras & Brochis & they love it so it proves it's attractivenes to fish. Angelfish will also benefit from this diet.
Available in 2 sizes 1.2mm & 3mm






We have standardised the prices on these new granules & we can now offer any mix to make up 300g, 500g & 1kg amounts. Just drop us an e-mail after clicking the mixed grade link with what you need & we will post out to you.

The Latest News

It's been awhile since I wrote something here. Last time we were getting problems with the site crashing. Since then we have improved our bandwidth & transferred one of my bigger sites on Killifish to an American server which releases a big amount of space. Hopefully crashes will be a thing of the past.
Loads of new imports continue to come in. New lines have been added to the site including the new wafers as Spirulina & a fish/beefheart blend. These are made up by a small operator & not a mass produced item.
Also new is the Cichlid floating mini sticks. These look really rich & I have sent some samples out for breeders to try out.
We have them as a red form or the green Spirulina. We have been missing a good quality floating stick. They should also prove very useful to our fancy goldfish customers.






We continue to search for new products & one of our suppliers who makes the very popular Astax crumb now informs us they can make up for us a Spirulina crumb. The specs look really good on this & we can't wait to get some in. As with the Red Astax we will have various sized granules to add to our list.
Also available will be a specialised Cichlid granule & a Discus granule.
Hopefully all these will be in stock in a couple of weeks.

Site Down

The website crashed for 4 days last weekend. We have 3 sites on the server & despite increasing to maximum allowable bandwidth to prevent this we went over & the sites crashed.
We have reluctantly decided to take the Killifish site offline to make more bandwidth available for the TA site. This should stop this happening in the future.
We apologise for inconvenience during the site being offline.
The Killifish site will be back in the near future as we are looking at hosting on another server to keep it seperate.

Spirulina Flake - We have negotiated our Spirulina flake to be made in larger flake sizes. Some customers have asked if this is possible. The flake will now be taken off the machine without reducing to usual flake size. This is easily reduced to flake sizes you prefer.
We really sell a lot of this flake & it's always produced freshly on our order & not taken from stock.

Stick Feeds - The biggest shipment of sticks we have ever brought in is on the way over. We had to increase order weight as it is proving extremely popular now with 50% of the earthworm stick already sold from this shipment.
As you may be aware we get these made up from a single source who produces small quantities. The machine producing these sticks recently broke down & a brand new machine had to be bought. This has not been cheap & consequently the cost to us has risen slightly. We did not put the price up on the last rise to us but this time had to increase slightly.
New floating sticks of Spirulina & another of Beef Heart is currently coming in which fills a gap in our stick feeds.
Wafers - New wafers of Spirulina & another of Beef Heart are on the way over also. Our customers asked us to source a good supply which we have done.

The driving agency part of the business has been extremely busy lately. Postage has been a problem but I now have someone to post daily so this sorts out a big headache.
This side of the business provides a lot of income for the fish side. We are currently working on a long overdue repackaging of our granule, brine shrimp, stick etc range in foil pouches. These will be designed to look good on retailers shelves.
More flakes will be packed in our tubs too.
The black flake is due to come in again soon. This has proved a great food for livebearers & guppies in particular.

Holiday

Every year I say I will never shut down for a full week again & go off with the bucket & spade to Malta & every year I still do it. Coming back is always the same thing with loads of orders & correspondance to clear. This year was extremely busy & it took 2 days to clear all orders. As always all orders were in the post as fast as possible & this year all were away on Monday.
Orders on Monday were also heavy but will be in the post on Tuesday morning.
We try to work a 'just in time' policy of bringing in small quantities freshly made food & now many feeds are needing to be made up with our suppliers. A lot of food from all over the world will be coming in shortly.
The BCA will be holding a meeting & auction in Redditch (same venue as our charity auctions) on 26th September & we will have a stand there on the day to show our products off.