Here's my review!
Scales - The Fish Warehouse
My Impressions
I was concerned on the way. Heading there, you travel down beat up roads through mostly residential area until you come to a small strip mall type area where it's located. I found the sign, that simply says Tropical Fish, and my daughter and I headed in. I opened the door, and all I could see were tanks. Already, I was looking forward to this.
My first impression was WOW.
First we meandered through the equipment and dry goods. They carry a nice selection of stuff, although on equipment I found their prices a bit high compared to online shopping, but that was to be expected. I was really impressed with their selection of driftwood and artificial plants, they have a large assortment of really cool stuff I've never found anywhere else. In the middle of the Dry Goods area, towards the back, is the big 144gallon half circle Discus Tank (see pics) for $5000. Very impressive to look at.
They carried a small assortment of tanks and stands, all pretty reasonably priced IMO. But, enough of that, on to the livestock.
Rows and rows and rows of fish tanks. I'm not exaggerating one bit. They had 8 aisles of tanks, and I did a general count of 36-40 tanks per aisle. That estimates out to about 400 display tanks. The guy I spoke with said there was another ~400 in the back of receiving and QT tanks. Very impressive. The first aisle we entered contained a large selection of piranhas. BIG piranhas too. On the other side of the aisle, was a huge, beautiful selection of Discus. They had 9 30ish gallon tanks dedicated to discus, and they were incredible.
At the back of the store were 20ish tanks dedicated to FW plants. All very well kept and in great condition. We continued through the rest of the FW stuff, and they had a huge variety of fish, all kinds of stuff, stuff I've never heard of. All in great condition. I'll note now that during our perusing of the 400ish tanks, there was not a single dead fish, not a single indication of disease, and I couldn't even find a spot of algae. All of their tanks were clean, and I didn't see any incompatible fish being housed together.
They had stuff that I'd consider to be a little more on the rare side too. They had cory cats I've never even heard of, they had some of the rarer plecos in stock, they had a selection of the flat hillside loaches (I think that's what they're called). They had 3 FW stingrays, eels, etc too. A very nice selection of not so common stuff.
Then we got to the saltwater section. Again, incredible. They had all kinds of stuff, all in great condition. The fish all looked healthy and happy, the corals all looked great, and the inverts they had were numerous. I'm not a SW guy, so I can't talk specifics, but overall I think they have a good selection of SW stuff too.
So, when I arrived at the store, I realized I had my camera phone with me, and decided to snap pics as I went through. I took several pics of price tags for 2 reasons. To give an idea of what they carried in stock, and to give an idea of their prices. Especially the SW stuff, since I don't have any background to compare it to. I don't have a great camera phone, but I think it did okay to get the point across.
If you have any questions I'll see if I can recall and answer them. Hope this helps.
Overall, if you have a Saturday and need something to do, I'd highly recommend the trip at least once to see it. I don't know that they'll become my normal LFS, because they're so far away, but I'll definately be making an occasional trip out.
Like I said, I took pics with my phone. I didn't sort them or edit them, I just threw them all up on the web.
Here's the link
We gotta go!!!!
