Charlutz
Members
Every Thanksgiving, I take the family back to NY where I grew up to visit family. We go to see my aunt who lives in Dutchess county, about an hour and a half north of NYC. I found out this year that she is very close to three of the largest cichlid breeders on the East coast and tried to make arrangements to get in some visits. I first contacted Frank "frschul" whose posts I'd seen on the cichlid-forum. He was very nice but was going to be in Virginia over Thanksgiving. He repeatedly offered to take me by the other breeders any time I came up. He's on my list of people to meet.
The second breeder was a friend of Frank's and only took visitors by appointment, so I tried a third option and took a look at the website of Atlantis (Peter Rubin), www.cichlids.net. Bingo! The website said that the facility was open from 10-2 every Saturday. Because of the holiday, I emailed Peter to make sure they'd be open and heard back that they would.
The drive was about 40 mins from my aunt's. The weather was in the low 30's, but from experience, I left my coat in the car and entered the 4k s.f. warehouse. It was a predictable 85+ degrees inside. I'd best describe the warehouse as a cross between a mail order facility and a pet store. The advantage of dealing with private breeders is that you get great prices and a variety of species never found in stores. The flip side is that if you are used to pet stores, you might get put off by warehouses, which are often dark, not well labeled, and generally not as customer accessible as a retail outlet -- nor should they be. To offer the variety of fish they do at the prices they do, they can't spend the money to pretty up the store into a retail outlet.
Anyway, Atlantis was a bit of a hybrid. Lots of species and great prices, a decent amount of light (I brought a flashlight just in case and had to use it in a few spots). Most of the tanks were correctly labeled, but none had prices. There was a copy of the website price list floating around, but it would have been better if I brought my own. The facility itself was super clean, as were the tanks. I think I only saw one fishius floatius. :innocent0006: There were about 12 other people in the warehouse, including some people from England who were visiting family and decided to stop by and pick up a few fish to bring back across the pond!
My brother counted the rows of tanks and with a little multiplication guessed that there were between 1200 and 1500 tanks in the place. The website claims it is over 40k gallons. I'd say maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the tanks contained their breeders. These fish were spectacular. They were very skittish as I walked by the tanks and I could tell they weren't disturbed often. There were lots of holding mouthbrooders, lamps with broods in the tank and a ~40g egg tumbler with 30 wells, most filled with eggs or fry. Each tank had sponge filters, but there might have been a central filtration system as well. I forgot to look.
Peter wasn't there, and there was only one person working, Jenn. I had my 2.5 y.o. daughter with me and she had fallen asleep on the ride over, so she would not let me put her down. I snapped a couple of pictures but they didn't come out too well. Since there was only one person working, I didn't want to lose my place in line. I was looking for WC alto. compressiceps females. I've got two gold head males, including one whose location I've had a hard time ascertaining. The Atlantis website has a picture of a male from Malasa that is the spitting image of mine, so I was desperately hoping they had some females.
I asked Jenn where the gold heads were and she pointed me to the two aisles where they kept the WC fish. It took a while but I found them in a tank marked only "gold head." Once I confirmed they were the Malasas, I took out my flashlight and tried to spot males/females. No such luck. All of the fish were about 2.5" and none had the distinctive look of a dominant male. I had no confidence I'd be able to pick a female and figured I'd just have to guess. I told Jenn to bag three for me and get females if she could. She said no problem. She could vent them on the spot. She took a net and expertly nabbed 5 fish very quickly, flipped them over, took a look and pulled three females! Woo hoo!
arty0006:
The fish bagging station was very efficient. A valve pours treated water (blue) straight from the tap; the bags are very thick and if you pick up from the warehouse, no box charge. Because my fish were going to be in the bags for 12 hours and it was cold, Jenn also added some heat packs. They were double bagged and arrived home in great shape.
In sum, if you are ever in the area, stop by Atlantis. Terrific sight to see. If you are looking on the internet for fish and they have what you want, I'd also recommend them. Peter is very nice, but his emails to me were brief. (We ended up forgetting my daughter's winter coat inside the warehouse. Peter emailed me Saturday night and shipped it to me first thing Monday!) :character0272: Just a reminder that it's not a retail store so don't be put off if you don't get a lot of answers by email.
Here's a pic of one of the rows of tanks. There were probably 20 rows like this, with tanks from 10g to 100g.
Here's a pic of a nice variety of jumbo cyp.
Here's a male enantiopus sp. kilesa.
Here's my male gold head.
Here is the pic of the Malasa gold head from Peter's site.
The second breeder was a friend of Frank's and only took visitors by appointment, so I tried a third option and took a look at the website of Atlantis (Peter Rubin), www.cichlids.net. Bingo! The website said that the facility was open from 10-2 every Saturday. Because of the holiday, I emailed Peter to make sure they'd be open and heard back that they would.
The drive was about 40 mins from my aunt's. The weather was in the low 30's, but from experience, I left my coat in the car and entered the 4k s.f. warehouse. It was a predictable 85+ degrees inside. I'd best describe the warehouse as a cross between a mail order facility and a pet store. The advantage of dealing with private breeders is that you get great prices and a variety of species never found in stores. The flip side is that if you are used to pet stores, you might get put off by warehouses, which are often dark, not well labeled, and generally not as customer accessible as a retail outlet -- nor should they be. To offer the variety of fish they do at the prices they do, they can't spend the money to pretty up the store into a retail outlet.
Anyway, Atlantis was a bit of a hybrid. Lots of species and great prices, a decent amount of light (I brought a flashlight just in case and had to use it in a few spots). Most of the tanks were correctly labeled, but none had prices. There was a copy of the website price list floating around, but it would have been better if I brought my own. The facility itself was super clean, as were the tanks. I think I only saw one fishius floatius. :innocent0006: There were about 12 other people in the warehouse, including some people from England who were visiting family and decided to stop by and pick up a few fish to bring back across the pond!
My brother counted the rows of tanks and with a little multiplication guessed that there were between 1200 and 1500 tanks in the place. The website claims it is over 40k gallons. I'd say maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the tanks contained their breeders. These fish were spectacular. They were very skittish as I walked by the tanks and I could tell they weren't disturbed often. There were lots of holding mouthbrooders, lamps with broods in the tank and a ~40g egg tumbler with 30 wells, most filled with eggs or fry. Each tank had sponge filters, but there might have been a central filtration system as well. I forgot to look.
Peter wasn't there, and there was only one person working, Jenn. I had my 2.5 y.o. daughter with me and she had fallen asleep on the ride over, so she would not let me put her down. I snapped a couple of pictures but they didn't come out too well. Since there was only one person working, I didn't want to lose my place in line. I was looking for WC alto. compressiceps females. I've got two gold head males, including one whose location I've had a hard time ascertaining. The Atlantis website has a picture of a male from Malasa that is the spitting image of mine, so I was desperately hoping they had some females.
I asked Jenn where the gold heads were and she pointed me to the two aisles where they kept the WC fish. It took a while but I found them in a tank marked only "gold head." Once I confirmed they were the Malasas, I took out my flashlight and tried to spot males/females. No such luck. All of the fish were about 2.5" and none had the distinctive look of a dominant male. I had no confidence I'd be able to pick a female and figured I'd just have to guess. I told Jenn to bag three for me and get females if she could. She said no problem. She could vent them on the spot. She took a net and expertly nabbed 5 fish very quickly, flipped them over, took a look and pulled three females! Woo hoo!
arty0006: The fish bagging station was very efficient. A valve pours treated water (blue) straight from the tap; the bags are very thick and if you pick up from the warehouse, no box charge. Because my fish were going to be in the bags for 12 hours and it was cold, Jenn also added some heat packs. They were double bagged and arrived home in great shape.
In sum, if you are ever in the area, stop by Atlantis. Terrific sight to see. If you are looking on the internet for fish and they have what you want, I'd also recommend them. Peter is very nice, but his emails to me were brief. (We ended up forgetting my daughter's winter coat inside the warehouse. Peter emailed me Saturday night and shipped it to me first thing Monday!) :character0272: Just a reminder that it's not a retail store so don't be put off if you don't get a lot of answers by email.
Here's a pic of one of the rows of tanks. There were probably 20 rows like this, with tanks from 10g to 100g.
Here's a pic of a nice variety of jumbo cyp.
Here's a male enantiopus sp. kilesa.
Here's my male gold head.
Here is the pic of the Malasa gold head from Peter's site.
