We thought it might be fun to share some insights into our fish store in Las Vegas. Exotic fish and coral pose unique challengers and we have found some unique ways to make things our own. We wanted to share some differences about how we source and treat our livestock.
Saltwater Fish
Sourcing Fish
Fish stores typically source their inventory through a network of about half a dozen major suppliers and an additional dozen smaller ones, all providing aquarium livestock at wholesale prices. Every fish store we are aware of uses these suppliers. It makes sense, they have massive inventories and great prices with overnight shipping from LA. Order today, livestock shows up tomorrow. There is a downside though, disease.
These fish are caught by thousands of fisherman all over the world, some are poisoned, some are caught with nets. They are then placed in holding tanks, anticipating their sale. Once the fish sell they are then shipped to wholesalers. Once there, they are transferred to different tanks, awaiting their next resale journey. Subsequently, they are shipped to the fish store, where, once more, they find themselves in yet another tank, ready for their final sale.
At each stop of the journey they are put in tanks with dozens to hundreds of other fish. This fish usually aren’t fed on this journey and are stressed, weakened and susceptible to disease. This means that by the time the saltwater store gets them, they have been through a lot. By the time they get into your tank they have been with 100’s or 1000’s of other stressed fish. This is the reason you see so much disease in the saltwater hobby.
There isn’t much that can be done about this. Some stores run copper in their tanks to help stop transfer of ich and velvet, but usually at non therapeutic levels. Also most stores have huge mono sumps being shared with dozens of tanks, so medicating with copper isn’t feasible as many fish are copper sensitive. It becomes Russian roulette.
The Artistic Oceans Difference
We struggled too with these issues but finally found another way. We work with a network of importers that allow us to source the fish directly from the fishermen. This allows us to ship the animals directly into us. This means they skip the huge holding pens, come in healthier, less stressed and fatter. We are the only fish store in Las Vegas that does this.
But then we go a step further. Not only do our fish come in happier and fatter, we do everything in our power to stop disease in its tracks. We dip all the fish in a combo of three things, freshwater dip, formalin, and methylene blue. Some fish get one of those, some get all three. Freshwater dips are for fish too sensitive for formaline, but does the same thing as formalin… gets rid of any flukes, velvet spores and Brooklynella. Methylene blue is a cure-all for fish and helps heal any open wounds and kills fungus. This step gets rid of a large chunk of diseases in the hobby.
After this, they go into our tank systems. Unlike most of our competitors, all our racks are individual. Meaning we have 3 tanks to 1 sump. So anything that happens in one rack, cant transfer to the other dozen, further increasing maintenance but also increasing safety for the livestock.
Each of our tanks has 2 numbers written on the black facing if you look closely, one is salinity and one is copper dosage. Depending on the species of fish, each fish goes into a tank with hypo-salinity (low salinity), which decreases stress on the fish and makes it very hard for diseases and especially ich to survive. The next number is copper concentration, we build all fish up to a therapeutic level. This isn’t as good as a full quarantine but it stops any replication in its tracks, meaning if one fish does have something.. it cannot transfer to hundreds, or thousands of others.
Finally, each tank is plumbed with an oversized UV sterilizer. Also unheard of in the hobby. We have double digit sterilizers running throughout the store killing anything else that snuck through the cracks.
This entire process is difficult, expensive and time consuming, but it is worth it. It also is what allows us to have a 6 month replacement guarantee on our fish, unheard of anywhere else.
After the fish are in our tanks, before they go to a new home, they are fed a combination of high end frozen food, nori, vitamin supplements and garlic.
Coral
Artistic Oceans has the largest selection of coral for sale in Las Vegas. It’s likely that we have more coral for sale than everyone in Las Vegas combined.
Sourcing Coral
Most coral is sourced the same way as the fish are. Large wholesalers acquire coral, put them in large holding tanks and resell them to end customers “Saltwater Aquarium Stores”. This leads to much of the same issues, little red bugs, aiptasia, hitch hikers, nudibranchs (the bad ones), and others.
The Artistic Oceans Difference
Much like our fish, we work directly with coral handlers all over the world. We have painstakingly cultivated relationships with dozens of coral suppliers all over the world. We comb through thousands of photos to get the nicest pieces of coral to get flown directly from them, to us.
And again, like with the fish, it doesn’t stop there. Once the coral arrives we aggressively clean and dip the coral. It is fragged (if needed), healed up and acclimated. We have 9 separate, large, coral frag tanks. Each tank has a combo of pest eating warriors inside of them (Aiptasia Eating File Fish, Valentini Puffer, a Black Molly, and a Six Line Wrasse) to keep them clean of anything our dip missed.
Each tank has hundreds of pounds of live rock, a uv sterilizer, and high end lights tuned to the specific corals in that tank. The coral are hand fed high quality foods specific to each coral while they wait for a new home.
Artistic Oceans
If you’re in the market for some exotic fish or coral, and live in or are visiting Las Vegas, come see us at our store!!
