MARINES

At Ultimate Aquatics we have always prided ourselves on the quality of our marine livestock.

In order to improve the quality and range of marine livestock which we can offer we have a separate marine reception and quarantine building. This is a result of ten years research and development and we believe it is unique in Europe.   For obvious commercial reasons we are unwilling to go into great detail, but here is an outline of why we believe that we will be able to offer you the best marine livestock in the UK.

Sources:

We have spent the last eight years identifying, trying, testing and then selecting the best sources of marine livestock from around the world. 

By working closely with our chosen suppliers and our transport partners we manage to consistently achieve a DOA (Dead On Arrival) level of well below 1%.  This is an order of magnitude below that which is regarded as normal in the trade.

We achieve this in 4 ways:

1/ We deliberately do not source livestock from areas where cyanide and explosive catching techniques are still used.

We believe that this is the only way to put a stop to these practices, as no one would be foolish enough to catch fish they know they cannot sell.  On the other hand if switching to net catching means that you can suddenly sell loads of fish then this is a very good incentive.  It really is a matter of importers, wholesalers, retailers and customers voting with their wallets.

2/ We source the right fish from the right place.  Local fish almost always do better than those which have already been trans-shipped.

3/ We always use professional suppliers who have proper fish holding facilities and who can pack the fish properly with oxygen and heat packs. 

3/ Our transport chain uses only the fastest and most direct shipping routes with alternatives built-in along the way to cover aircraft problems.

4/ We avoid certain "problem species" which just do not travel well or which tend to fare badly in captivity (or are at risk in the wild).

From this good starting point we capitalise on our efforts by taking superb care of every fish which we receive.

Arrival:

On arrival the boxes are opened under red light in a temperature controlled environment. The livestock is then very slowly acclimated to our water conditions over the next 12 hours.

Once booked in all our marine fish are identifiable to the level of individuals or at worst to conspecific groups for small shoaling fish.

Conditioning:

Feeding:

Before shipment most marine fish have been literally starved.  The shippers and exporters do this to reduce the bio-load on their holding tanks and to limit pollution in the shipping bags.  We reduce the period of this starvation to a minimum by buying fish from their native countries thus avoiding trans-shipment.  Our aim is to get the fish from the sea to our reception tanks as fast as possible.

So once they have been acclimated the next step is food, food, and more food delivered in small amounts at regular intervals throughout the daylight hours.

Treatment:

Fact: wild fish all carry pathogens on and in their bodies. 

These pathogens are more likely to cause disease when fish are stressed or otherwise immune suppressed.  Being taken into captivity is an unavoidably stressful experience and the fish often need our help to get through it.  We do not wait for a fish to exhibit signs of disease but instead we treat all newly arrived fish for parasitic and bacterial pathogens.

Inspection:

After a couple of weeks the fish have been acclimated, fed, and treated they are then ready for inspection by our team of biologists.  If they pass this inspection they are allowed out of the import facility and into the sales tanks.  If not they have to return to the start of the process.