A fish's Journey

At the exporters the fish are packed into plastic bags filled with water and oxygen ready for boxing.

A batch of fish boxed and ready to leave, in as little as 24 hours they could be at the other end of the world swimming about in our acclimatisation tanks.

All of our fish are collected by heated transport straight from the plane at our local airport.  After a 45 minute road journey they then enter our import facility.   To avoid any chance of cross-contamination or the accidental release of fish for sale too early our importation unit is located in an entirely separate building across the car park from our main buildings.  All comings and goings from this building are very closely monitored.

Unpacking

When they arrive the boxes of fish are opened under red light to minimise the effects of photo-shock.  The fish are then inspected and checked off against the packing notes to ensure that no errors have occurred.  From this point on we can track each individual bag of fish until it is sold; we record their origin, any losses, any treatments given and any problems encountered.  By tallying this information with the batch origin data we know who to shout at if we have a problem.   To be fair this degree of control generally means that we do not have problems, at least not more than once.  Our fish suppliers know that we will find out if there is a problem with their fish and that if there is we won't pay them.  Not surprisingly this policy tends to make them a lot more careful !

Note: This area is illuminated by red light to reduce photo-shock. Unfortunately our camera doesn't work under red light so this photo is a fake!

Acclimating

After they are booked in and unpacked each bag of newly arrived fish is carefully poured into an individual small acclimating tank with the original shipping water and immediately dosed with ammonia remover.  The acclimating tanks sit in a water bath which is gradually heated up from the initial shipping temperature to match that of our systems. System water and an ammonia detoxifier are added drop by drop to the acclimating tanks over a 12 hour period.  The following morning the fish are moved over into the conditioning tanks.  The acclimating tanks are then drained, sterilised and made ready for the next new arrivals.

Conditioning

The fish stay in our conditioning tanks for a minimum of two weeks.  For the first few days we rest the fish and feed them up. Once they have recovered from their journey the fish undergo a week long course of prophylactic treatments for bacterial and parasitic infections. At the end of the second week the fish are formally inspected.  Only if our biologists are happy with the fish are they released for sale and transferred to our sales tanks in the other buildings.  Fish which fail to make the grade are returned to the start of the conditioning process.

All this care and attention to detail means that we are as certain as we can be of the quality and disease-free status of any fish which we offer for sale.

We import the majority of our fish from the places listed below.  For more information on each source just click on the name.