Updates

The charity auction always takes up a lot of time before & after the event but it's always worth it when you see how much money was raised for our 3 main charities. If you haven't seen the results page yet please click the link in the yellow box top right corner of the home page.
I'm amazed how big this event is becoming. It attracts lots of the UK's finest breeders & I think is a fantastic day out & a chance to meet fellow fishkeepers & expert breeders alike.

Decapsulated Brine Shrimp now back in stock. This took a little time to get in due to processing at the facility. It's always hit & miss with this item which can come in with shell & rubbish. Thankfully after many years of working with this we have found some good people to deal with & this batch is very clean & shell free.
We have moved over 40 kg this week alone so it must be good to get these kind of repeat orders.

New Life Spectrum - At last the new range is in stock & cart buttons are now on the site. It's a really big range of products now but we are filling up with the range again so things will soon be back to the way it was before they moved premises.


Getting more work on the haulage side of the business which does cause a slight delay in posting in some cases due to early morning starts. Most orders are being sent by last post or next day.
This work brings in extra finance so we can bring in these expensive overseas imports & find new products for our customers.

Orders have been rising & new customers including Universities & professonal breeders have been placing orders.

Charity Auction

For 10 years now I have been involved in the Midland Charity Auction. To start with we didn't want to make it a commercial thing where someone made a profit from it. It's grown from making a few quid to generating hundreds of pounds each auction. Now we can say we have generated a few thousand pounds for various charities.
I don't think any other fish auction does this. It takes an army of people to help put these events on & I hope I can name them in the post auction report.
Conservation has always been close to my heart in fishkeeping. This year one of the old guard is packing up due to the inevitable advancing years & health issues. It's a sad fact that these people with a huge amount of experience need to pass things on to a younger set of enthusiasts but maybe they are not coming forward..
I know & fear that many of these collections will now die out in years to come.
With so many new collections now coming in conservation becomes very hard.

It is of course impossible to conserve everything in captivity. Let's hope we can leave nature to look after its own & not let our greed for land or resourse domination take over.....

Holiday

Back from holiday to a load of orders & e-mail work but all have been posted & replied to on the first day back. Didn't think I could get all the orders out but just managed it.
Back to normal again.....

Updates..

It's been a while since the last blog so I thought this would show I'm still here -
Orders have been really heavy over the past few weeks especially since Spectrum came in. Initially we only ordered the Cichlid Formula & the new Thera A 2mm granule. This has been due to the high demand for these items & our wish to get in a large stock to keep customers from waiting for new shipments.
We have been sending out buckets of 2.2kg Cichlid Formula virtually daily. The new 600g tubs believe it or not are almost sold out & a new order had to be placed. Last year it was the 300g tubs which were selling out - now customers want the larger tubs. It's a true measure of how good the food is.

As many of you know the business is split between mail order fish foods & my one man HGV driving agency. This has become very busy in itself & I have found myself working from 4am to midnight some days to keep up with all the work. In some cases I have not been home in time to get orders in the post & they have been delayed 24 hours longer than normal. For this I apologise but under the circumstances we are coping very well.
The money generated from this driving agency side is being ploughed back into getting bigger stocks in where things like sticks regularly go out of stock. Also expanding into new foods we have wanted to include on the site becomes a lot nearer happening.
Sales of brine shrimp eggs continue to grow. In one week we sold 185 x 550g pouches. A lot of farms now buy from us.

Our Midland charity auction is fast approaching for June 6th. Please see the site for regular updates. The photo was taken today. Swans & Coots are nesting on the pool.

Spectrum Finally Now In !!!

Yes, it's true - Spectrum have docked today & should be here on Friday. Judging by the amount of e-mails we have had asking about the next shipment arrival date it looks like we will be kept busy mailing out.
Several cases are already ordered from other EC countries.
We should have them ready for the BCA convention on the 18th April along with a decent stock of Dainichi. Looking forward to the lectures. Some good speakers on this year.

Photographs - Dainichi

I have been struggling along with a couple of cheap compact digital cameras to take photos of the products on the site. In one week both cameras gave up the ghost leaving a hole in putting good photos on the site. I decided to save up & get a decent digital SLR & finally bought a Canon 550D which is a superb piece of kit.
It takes really nice movie quality & I'm looking at doing something in this direction in the future.

I have been having problems with the disc drive & it finally packed up just as I was going to load the Canon software. Tomorrow will see the computer in bits & a new drive installed (hopefully).
Then I can get to grips with all the temporary photos on the site & some new photos of the new flake food tubs which look great.

Dainichi are again having some problems with beaurocracy. This ridiculous legislation dreamed up in Brussels is having a big effect on Dainichi & NLS. The US authorities are behind in renewing export licenses to the EC & consequently Dainichi (from 9th April) have not been able to renew their license. They have applied in good time but the authorities have not even started the ball rolling in the renewal process.
I personally thought we in the UK were contributing over £170 Billion pounds a year to the EC to make life easier but I must have missed something here.
This means I cannot get shipments in & will have to make do with the stock I have.
I have a decent stock available at the moment but some grades & pack sizes are now out of stock. I expect the British Cichlid Association auction this weekend to bring stocking levels down.

Some New Products

Sales of our stick foods have been steadily increasing. These are not cheap but we buy in from what we consider the best manufacturer in the world for these products & quality always demands a higher price.
It's true other online sellers offer cheaper sticks but generally these are sold for angling purposes & not in the same ball park regarding quality.
We are the only UK customer for this companies product.

We will be bringing in more varieties of sticks from this manufacturer which contain Garlic to prevent fungal & bacterial infections in the gut & Paprika which is a well known attractant to fish.
These new sticks will be -

Spirulina - Garlic/Paprika
Colour - Garlic/Paprika
Cichlid - Garlic/Paprika
Vitamin - Garlic/Paprika

It usually takes 3 weeks to make these up & ship to us. As always these are freshly made up. We order small regular quantities rather than a bulk lot which is sitting on the shelf for months.