Finest Aquatics. Who are we?
Finest Aquatics, or should I say Finest Filters, started off in 2010 in a small room in Liverpool, as a home based business creating pleco caves out of slate and compatible filter media, providing a little bit of pocket money to help out with university expenses.
Since then the business has grown substantially, and as such, so has the need for space, going from a bedroom to a 15000 sq/ft building in Widnes, now providing the aquatic community with over 250,000 items. (We still sell pleco caves and filter media 😄) dry goods and livestock are all available to be posted out around the country with next day delivery, or click and collect with instore collection. We provide our service through our websites, eBay, and more recently Amazon.
Fast forward to late 2018, the business owner, Adam, decided to take the next logical step in the growth of the business and started planning out the livestock side, Finest Aquatics, hiring renowned reef expert Jake Green as the store manager.
Jake then reached out to members of the aquatic community to look for the dream team he envisioned, Hiring Mike Brunskill, former Livestock coordinator at Tropical Marine Center, and self proclaimed fish guy as his assistant manager.
With both the coral and fish aspect of the marine side covered it was time to look towards the Freshwater side.
Next to join the team was Josh Saunders, Aquascaper and fellow aquatic plant geek, quickly followed by breeding expert Liam Roberts.
Over the next few months, what was originally a packing room of a warehouse was transformed into a fish shop, with the diverse team reaching out to various suppliers and wholesalers to stock an enormous range of livestock and products using their knowledge of their different parts of the hobby, and in April 2021 we opened our doors to the public. Finest Aquatics was born.
Let’s fast forward again, to January 2022, by this point we realised we needed more space, after featuring in multiple page articles in Practical Fishkeeping and Ultramarine, the store started to get a lot busier and we started to plan out “Phase Two” of Finest Aquatics, hiring marine biologist Taylor Fell to complete the team, we then looked towards the next step, do we open a second store, or do we expand the first?
We chose the latter, and spent the next few months creating a pond section outside for high quality Japanese Koi, and building a new freshwater room upstairs, more than doubling the size of the existing shop, and allowing Josh to lean the freshwater side towards his forte, the planted side of the hobby, with an enormous range and selection of hardscape materials, an aquascaping dojo, aquascape displays and a huge range of products including those of our fellow UKAPS sponsors, Tropica and CO2Art, filling in a gap that was sorely needed in the North West, an aquascaping specialist store.
To mark the opening of the expansion, which coincided with our one year anniversary in April, we launched an successful and incredibly well received event which will now be an annual thing, Finest Fest, the first trade event open to the public in the UK, with over 20 brands represented and live aquascaping workshops with UKAPS very own Stu Worrall and George Farmer.
Now here we are in May 2022, incredibly proud to be a sponsor for UKAPS, looking forward to getting to know you all and already working on Phase Thr… Oh wait I can’t talk about that yet 🤫
Any questions or suggestions please feel free to drop us a message here, on our social media pages, through our website or as an email. All links are available in our forum signature.
Finest Aquatics, or should I say Finest Filters, started off in 2010 in a small room in Liverpool, as a home based business creating pleco caves out of slate and compatible filter media, providing a little bit of pocket money to help out with university expenses.
Since then the business has grown substantially, and as such, so has the need for space, going from a bedroom to a 15000 sq/ft building in Widnes, now providing the aquatic community with over 250,000 items. (We still sell pleco caves and filter media 😄) dry goods and livestock are all available to be posted out around the country with next day delivery, or click and collect with instore collection. We provide our service through our websites, eBay, and more recently Amazon.
Fast forward to late 2018, the business owner, Adam, decided to take the next logical step in the growth of the business and started planning out the livestock side, Finest Aquatics, hiring renowned reef expert Jake Green as the store manager.
Jake then reached out to members of the aquatic community to look for the dream team he envisioned, Hiring Mike Brunskill, former Livestock coordinator at Tropical Marine Center, and self proclaimed fish guy as his assistant manager.
With both the coral and fish aspect of the marine side covered it was time to look towards the Freshwater side.
Next to join the team was Josh Saunders, Aquascaper and fellow aquatic plant geek, quickly followed by breeding expert Liam Roberts.
Over the next few months, what was originally a packing room of a warehouse was transformed into a fish shop, with the diverse team reaching out to various suppliers and wholesalers to stock an enormous range of livestock and products using their knowledge of their different parts of the hobby, and in April 2021 we opened our doors to the public. Finest Aquatics was born.
Let’s fast forward again, to January 2022, by this point we realised we needed more space, after featuring in multiple page articles in Practical Fishkeeping and Ultramarine, the store started to get a lot busier and we started to plan out “Phase Two” of Finest Aquatics, hiring marine biologist Taylor Fell to complete the team, we then looked towards the next step, do we open a second store, or do we expand the first?
We chose the latter, and spent the next few months creating a pond section outside for high quality Japanese Koi, and building a new freshwater room upstairs, more than doubling the size of the existing shop, and allowing Josh to lean the freshwater side towards his forte, the planted side of the hobby, with an enormous range and selection of hardscape materials, an aquascaping dojo, aquascape displays and a huge range of products including those of our fellow UKAPS sponsors, Tropica and CO2Art, filling in a gap that was sorely needed in the North West, an aquascaping specialist store.
To mark the opening of the expansion, which coincided with our one year anniversary in April, we launched an successful and incredibly well received event which will now be an annual thing, Finest Fest, the first trade event open to the public in the UK, with over 20 brands represented and live aquascaping workshops with UKAPS very own Stu Worrall and George Farmer.
Now here we are in May 2022, incredibly proud to be a sponsor for UKAPS, looking forward to getting to know you all and already working on Phase Thr… Oh wait I can’t talk about that yet 🤫
Any questions or suggestions please feel free to drop us a message here, on our social media pages, through our website or as an email. All links are available in our forum signature.
