Folks,

Local Fish Stores are an endangered species.
Like everywhere, the Pet Club, Pet Smart and Petco stores dominate the city/suburban areas. I started to gander around Tucson Arizona and was fortunate to find Arizona Nature Aquatics located in Northeast part of the city. It's a 45 minute trip from my Arizona home, but well worth it! Heading over to the About page on their website gives you an idea of the high standards of quality maintained by the owner Ben.
http://www.arizonanatureaquatics.com/about-us/ . It's great a gem like Arizona Nature Aquatics exist so close to me. I suspect Ben will continue to be the recipient of some of my hard earned discretionary spending.

For more than a decade we've been splitting our time between Southern Sonora Mexico and Southern Arizona USA, which necessitated keeping the fishkeeping hobby to an absolute minimum.
I keep things s
mall enough to transport should we do a bit more back and forth between the countries.
Point is, obviously I buy very little each time I visit Ben's store.

For the home, we started with a 4 gallon all-in-one aquarium w/ LED lighting for the house that contains a 1 male Betta Splendis, 1 Amano 1 Shrimp, 1 Chili Shrimp (don't know it's name), 1 Peppermint Shrimp (yeah, I know that's an old name), 2 Otocinclus Affinis, 3 Endlers, and a nice hunk of manzanito and floating duckweed. Everyone has been flourishing for the months that we've had this up and running.. slowly adding things as we go along. All of the specimens are rather exceptional in appearance.

I have a 10 that is used for experimentation in my lab/office/shop (whether that be in Arizona or Mexico) and I've just introduced a lone pair of Gold Rams. Why? Because they are the finest that I've seen.. period.. in over 25 years of keeping them on and off. Great body shape, great active dispositions. They are bred locally by a hobbyist. Same with his German Blue Rams which I will be getting soon as well. The breeder even visits Venezuela and Columbia every couple of years to catch some wild blood to back cross into his breeding populations. Ben gets his Rams from this guy. It's the same with some of the other fish as well. His Emperor Tetras in fact are bred right in the store.

Anyway, I could go on and on... I won't. Ben has been around the hobby since childhood and his store reflects the accumulation of a life-time of knowledge.

Arizona Nature Aquatics
3518 N. Country Club Rd.
Tucson, AZ 85716
520.321.9000
www.arizonanatureaquatics.com
b Rd.
Tucson, AZ — 85716