I’ve often thought of starting a new series about some of our local
stores, as I know many of our members might be interested, but I’ve
always avoided it for fear of offending a store by mentioning (or not
mentioning) them. In this first installment, I’ll put it off for at
least one more month by reviewing a store that’s halfway across the
country!
Village Tropical is a medium-sized store in the middle of Houston, Texas. We came in search of Apistogramma species a few months ago, as part of a semi-vacation. What we found was the store I wish we had here in Seattle. Don’t get me wrong; many of the qualities we saw exist in Seattle stores, but I’ve never seen them all in the same place.
The biggest thing that catches your eye is that one of the three rooms that make up the store is nothing but fully-planted tanks. There are at least five different setups, varying in technology from the simple low-light arrangement all the way up to a high-light CO2-injected 100-gallon tank. None of the fish or plants in these tanks are for sale, so they end up being a good source of aquascaping tips, and give you an idea of what a planted aquarium can look like once it has been allowed to settle for a year or more. Clearly, these tanks were kept by someone who really loves plants!
The plants themselves include the usual variety of hygros, crypts, vals, etc, but we found three species that had never shown their faces elsewhere (see my article last month). All the "for sale" plants were kept in two racks of 40-gallon breeder tanks.
They also have a wide variety of fish, including some rarities. We’re big fans of dwarf cichlids, of which there were plenty (including a rack of 10-gallon tanks turned on end, housing some Apistogramma we did indeed find). For the non-cichlid lover, we also found nice tetras, and small koi.
