Welcome to SCALES Tropical Fish Warehouse! We are a new aquarium shop serving to Washington, DC metro and Central Maryland regions.
The critical info:
SCALES Tropical Fish Warehouse
744 Cloverly Street
Silver Spring, MD 20905
www.scales-tfw.com
(301) 384-7839
The Business Plan:
In early 2005 Andrew and Jim saw an opportunity in the aquarium market serving the Maryland Suburbs of DC. We began planning in earnest in February. We started construction on Septemeber 1 and on February 15, 2006 we opened our doors. Our most important goals were to provide the highest quality livestock and service while maintaining competitive prices on shelf goods. Our commitment to the animals that we keep in aquaria is evidenced by our inclusion of quarantine facilities in the backup areas of the store. Of the more than 600 tanks in the store, 400 are retail sales floor, 200 are in the backup areas for quarantine and receiving large orders. Fish are quarantined for at least 3 days. Any stock exhibiting stress or disease are treated and not released until we can certify that they are healthy and ready to sell. Where appropriate, specimens are treated prophylactically. In addition to the quality of livestock, we wanted to make sure that our store was comfortable for our customers. The store is lit, open and clean throughout. No dark, smelly fish room here!
Now what you really want to hear:
WAMAS members get 10% off livestock. So do any members of any aquarium club from anywhere. Just show your membership card to the cashier when you buy a fish or coral. We maintain memberships in many aquarium societies, both local local and national, and understand the value of the relationship between hobbyist and industry. We're looking forward to working with WAMAS and its members. I hope to be able to regularly post here when we have new stock, sales, etc. so that WAMAS members be the first to know.
Current specials:
Oceanic 200gal salt buckets, $34.99 while supplies last. Instant Ocean 160gal buckets, $34.99; out of stock at the moment but more's coming on Thursday. We'll do our best to have at least one salt mix bucket on sale at any time. We regularly have sales when they are offered by our manufacturers and distributors.
We are adding specialty marine products all the time. If you have something in particular that you want us to stock, let us know. Pre-orders may be discounted, depending on the specific product and availability.
Marine Livestock:
Once our systems are completed, we'll have over 4,000 gallons of marine systems. Right now we have a coral system up and running with three 120gal tanks out of seven lit. We primarily feature soft and LPS corals until our system is a bit more mature and we've refined the engineering. We have a critter system up and running with cleanup crews and small ornamentals like cleaner shrimp and serpent stars. We have a limited selection of small fish. The next projects are to finish the filtration on the critter system and to start building the marine fish retail and quarantine systems.
The best pieces of coral in stock right now:
Green heliofungia that extends more than 10" when fully puffed. Amazing creature. Big red lobo, maybe 6" by 4". Cat-eye Physogyra 6" across with nice green color. Plate Scolymia, bright orange polyp. Pagoda coral with great formation and tight polyps (looks like a zo rock when extended), 8-9" across its widest point. Green Leptoria Maze Brain with great color, 5" across. Yellow tip torch color with nice big polyps and great color. We have a bunch more stuff including zo rocks, corallimorphs, marcoalgae rocks and other LPS and soft corals. Come and see if you haven't been here yet.
That's enough rambling. Thanks for reading and we look forward to meeting everyone.
Andrew and Jim
