First Visit To A Maidenhead Aquatics!

I visited my first Maidenhead Aquatics at the weekend (unfortunately I haven't got one particularly close by so had to wait for a convenient time to take a trip out). It was in the grounds of a pretty nice garden centre near Worksop called The Dukeries. Must say I was quite impressed with the setup and they had a very good variety of fish and seemed professional with customers. Unfortunately I was primarily on the lookout for shrimp and they were at bit short on shrimp stock at the time I called so I came away empty handed.

Following the MA visit, I then went even further afield to Wharf Aquatics (Pinxton, Notts) and was blown away by the selection of fish they had on offer! It was literally floor to ceiling tanks in something of a U shape. Unfortunately it was a bit busy so it was difficult to get a really good look at the fish on offer, but needless to say there were many which I'd never come across before and aren't in the fish profiles on here. If it's in travelling distance for anyone I'd recommend you take a gander. 

Like Chris, I have a MA just a mile up the road in a really good garden centre with a coffee shop and cakes. Almost heaven! The MA is really good for both freshwater and marine, but the outside pond side of things is very limited.

..... the marine stuff definitely had my credit card sweating!

I know what you mean! Fortunately, we're aiming to move house before the year is out and any future purchase of tankage is well on the back-burner for a while. But a boy can dream.

I have an ma about 2 miles away and it's very good nice fairly decent sized in a garden Center just for a change lol, there's also one in Leeds that I've been to but didn't have as much in it just the usual stock of tetras, barbs and live bearers.

I certainly have been a couple of times, it's a nice shop and all the fish seem healthy and well maintained, my only issue with it was that a lot of the fish were almost if not fully grown so you are buying the finished article and can't watch them grow which is 1 of the things I really love. It's a great shop if a little cramped with the above my only criticism of it.

I've only recently discovered that I have a truly local LFS. It has a lot of unusual fish, more than the "normal" ones. Unfortunately, most of these are unusual for a very good reason, they are totally unsuitable for most people's tanks. The main reason is size, typically needing a 4 foot plus tank, sometimes much bigger, and often completely unsuitable for a community setup. However, I suspect that most are actually bought by people who can't provide the correct conditions but are attracted by these small juvenile "oddball" fish without considering the consequences.
There are many attractive easy care fish that could be more available, from the tetra/barb/danio groups etc., but unfortunately these lack obvious appeal in a dealer's tank and so are often missing while the immediately attractive but ultimately unsuitable clown loach is found everywhere.

Sounds like they may be worth trying. What's their selection of fish like? Are they predominantly the tetra/barb/live bearer mix you referred to earlier or do they stock some more unusual species? Also, do they do any varieties of shrimp at all? Cheers

They do stock a decent variety of fish from your standard tetras to your more unusuals, I'd never come across peacock gudgeons in shops until I saw them in there, they also have some nice looking discus fish and marines, they have different stock often as the guy running it has about 100 tanks at home and brings in what he has once they sell out the stock they have, the guy running it knows his stuff quite well too, as I say the only real issues are the fish sizes as they are mostly fully grown and the shop is very packed in and can be a struggle to move around if it's busy!
Let me know what you think! As I've not been back for a few weeks now.

I'm just back from a trip to MA to stock up on frozen food and also to collect some endlers which I've been hankering after for a while. They'd just got them in stock when I phoned last week and I thought it best to give em a while to settle in before I bought some.

Now a proud owner of 6 endlers  and the end of stocking my first tank. They've got some good offers on tanks at my MA but sadly they don't deliver so I either will need to find somewhere else to get a good deal on a bigger tank or persuade one of my son's friends to be obliging and pick one up for us

I've been waiting for them to get some in. They're loving the tank and are pecking away at my mosses and other plants, eating the algae rather than the plants I hope. They're acting like they're starving and I'm sure that isnt the case. The guys that run my MA are all keen aquarists and happy to offer advice if you ask, one of the guys in particular loves 'talking' fish.

It's amazing how the addition of a few fish can change a tanks dynamics. I'm actually a tad worried that I might have bought them too small. My indian glass fish have rather large mouths 

. Don't worry if you see one with it's fins all flared and body twisted sideways, twitching in front of another endler. That's just males being males.

Ahhh so that's what it was doing, I did wonder when I saw one do that first thing this morning. And yep they haven't stopped picking, they're doing a very good job with the algae I have to say