Brackish stores in the UK

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Barrydwise

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Aug 27, 2005
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Location
Herts, UK
Hi there

I'm new to this forum. One of my sons has a brackish tank and we spent yesterday driving around visiting 9 fish shops to look for something to buy.

It got me thinking how useful it would be to compile a list of fish shops in my area that stock brackish fish. Obviously that would have limited appeal but how about we broaden it to cover the whole of the UK. Say something along the lines of store name and location and examples of stock you've seen there. Is there anything to stop us giving our opinion of the shop?

So to get things moving, here's 3 I know and have bought from (recently!):

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Hertfordshire Fisheries at Burston Garden Centre North Orbital Road Saint Albans Hertfordshire United Kingdom AL2 2DS Tel: 01727 833960. 4 brackish tanks, covering moray eels, scats, monos, archers, f8 & green spot puffers, bumblebee and knight gobies & shark cats.
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Maidenhead Aquatics Wyevale Country Gardens, Daws Lane, Mill Hill, London NW7 4SL Tel: 020 8201 1999. 6-8 brackish tanks, covering scats, monos, archers, f8 & green spot puffers, & bumblebee gobies.
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Maidenhead Aquatics, North Orbital Road St Albans Hertfordshire AL2 1DL, Tel 01727 825815. 9-12 brackish tanks, covering scats, monos, archers, f8, topaz, humpback & green spot puffers, frogfish (stonefish) & shark cats.
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I'd recommend any of these shops. Do you know any others to add to the list?

Cheers

Barry
 
Hi Barry,

Your mix of stores overlaps mine... I live in Hertfordshire too (Berkhamsted) I tend to visit places I can get too easily by train. The Hertfordshire Fisheries place at How Wood near St. Albans is excellent. I bough some first class halfbeaks there, and not only did they all survive (a minor miracle with these fish) they turned out to be a different and rather rare species. The guy who runs the fish section seems above average when it comes to fishkeeping knowledge.

A place I found that was rubbish was World of Water in Watford. Lots of tanks were overstocked, and the selection seemed a bit bizarre (i.e., lots of cheap but giant fish, inbred livebearers, etc.). I was a teeny bit disappointed with the stuff at Maidenhead Aquatics at St Albans: they had some tiny mottled sleeper gobies that I fear are going to grow up into 30 cm monsters but they didn't even have the Latin names for them. But otherwise, a nice range of stuff maintained to their usual high standards.

The Maidenhead Aquatics in Chipperfield near Kings Langley is rather small but has a few things worth looking at. They had some interesting brackish water crabs, and lots of medium sized green spotted puffers. On the other hand, the much larger Maidenhead Aquatics in Wembley is pretty good though still seemingly being built. The staff are very nice. I bought some very cool Awaous gobies from them as well some halfbeaks. Last time I was there (maybe 2 weeks ago?) they had in the brackish section not a huge amount, mostly puffers and archers and maybe some bumblebees as well.

I haven't been to the Maidenhead Aquatics in Mill Hill for years, the last time was maybe 6 years ago. But I do remember they would get some really nice stuff in, such as pipefish and green chromides.

I trawled Aquatic Design Centre on the Great Portland St in London on my way back to Euston the other day. A nice thing is they are open evenings, on Mondays until 8 PM. Some curious stock, including some halfbeaks and those nice brackish water Nerites you don't see that often.

Best place for brackish in London that I go to is Wholesale Tropicals. They have a database of species at the Tropicalfishfinder.co.uk site. They're one of the few places that regularly carry gobies, livebearers, and killifish in any diversity.

I've never been to the Wildwoods in Enfield; it's just too difficult to get to from here without a car (I must be the only person to have lived in the US and never learned to drive...). But I'm told it's very good.

Sadly, my hometown has a useless tropical fish section in the garden centre. An insane variety of fish offered -- black Labeo sharks, baby silver dollars, pink kissers, that sort of thing.

Cheers,

Neale
 
Shirley Aquatics, Shirley, Birmingham have got just about every brackish fish you can think of.
 

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