About us
Algae cuttings
We are a small family run buisness that has sold via word of mouth, on specialist forums, auction sites and to retail establishments. In this time we have supplied Public aquaria, Univeristies, Teaching hubs and hobbiests
Initially sourcing and propagating algae as a means to fund our own display aquaria. It became apparent the UK market was lagging severly behind the rest of Europe and America in terms of what species were available, quality of these and the understanding required to take viable sustainable cuttings for the hobby.
8 years ago we made the descission to turn our expertise into a 'cottage industry', supplying small volumes of high quality, bespoke cuttings to the hobby and we have met some WONDERFUL people along the way!!
Personally I have over 10 YEARS EXPERIENCE sourcing, propagating, growing, and shipping beautiful marine macro algae species for reef aquaria. However my passion for marine macro alage has been a constant throughout my life and was only hightened 24 years ago after being privelaged enough to spend time studying the impact of estuarine and tropical tidepool algae species on pollution in developing countries during my university years.
This is our next chapter and we would welcome both old aquaiantances and new to follow us, somewhat belatedly into the 21st Centuary with the launch of our website, hopefully bringing the joys of macro algae dominant aquaria to the hobby. (or just for people to pop a sneaky cutting into that area in their reef tank where no coral seems to ever thrive!!)
We do not profess to run huge growout facilities. We will firmly be sticking to our more bespoke, 'limited release of cuttings only once we are fully happy they are rested' model.
The setup we have is enough to ensure we can hopefully release a viable amount of correctly taken, exceptional quality cuttings weekly from our dedicated, pest free Algae growout aquaria.
All cuttings are taken professionally from the main thallus or holdfast stock of F1 donor plants, whose age can be verified.
Donor plants are correctly rotated seasonally to allow for dormant periods and control the chance of cuttings undergoing sexual reproduction and death that can ultimately lead to harmful nutrient spikes in the recipients aquaria
All algae cuttings will be FULLY HEALED and RESTED for a MINIMUM of 2 weeks prior to shipping
Above all we absolutely WILL NOT risk our REPUTATION by sending unviable 'clippings' taken from the practice of chopping back and pruning old donor plants!
Coral frags
We have always sold a few coral frags, via private sales from our own display aquaria. Now we will be opening these sales to the public via our website.
Many of our corals come from our 9 year old mixed algae/coral aquarium and spent long periods before this in other aquaria and as such are extremely aquarium hardy and compliment our selection of marine macro algae. There are a good few in there that no longer appear on import lists and are oddities that would be classed as 'rare', these will also be fragged sparingly as to not decimate the donor colonies.
We abhore the practice of 'fragging' mature colonies to make a multitude of small frags baring no resemblance to the original mother and as always will only frag from our own stock.
All our frags will be actively growing. Personally I was always taught for the healthiest most robust frags to take frags small and actively grow onto the plug over a few weeks. The practice of cutting frags to plug size, resting for a few days and selling does not sit well with me and will not happen. You will not see bright white frag plugs on any of our frags!
Our corals are where possible sold under their scientific name with colour descriptors or under a widely accepted common name. We cannot keep up with or wish to entertain the practise of elevating coral status with randomly assigned named. i.e a red goniopora with sparkling tips will be sold as that, NOT 'Flamingo sparkle, fireball kissed goniopora"!
Photographs and description of corals will be of a true likeness of the coral under normal reef lighting parameters, we will NOT use filters, shoot under heavy blue or photoshop our images. I can barely take a decent photo of my cats, let alone do I know how to create some oversaturated, filtered image of a coral! I see zero point in the practise anyhow, I would as a buyer expect to recieve what I saw in a photograph, not something that looks nothing like a fantasy image!
Our Promise
Above all we are hobbiests too and undertand reef aquaria are expensive, we would not want anyone to recieve dead, poor quality, misrepresented livestock anymore than we would expect to recieve it when buying it online ourselves!