RETAILER FOCUS: SIMS TROPICAL FISH
We take a trip down to Sussex to visit a ‘modern hybrid’ store with a heap of new and old school favourites — plus a few that might shock you!
In modern times, more and more stores are adopting a hybrid form of trading, split between online transactions and a bricks and mortar property. We visit a big name of this new mixed world.
LET ME OPEN with the most contentious subject — big fish. SIMS is not shy about stocking some fish that might make the lay hobbyist’s hair stand on end. In fact, in the roughly 190 sale tanks inside the property, I may have seen more classic tankbusters than I’ve ever witnessed under one roof.
The owner, Martyn, quashed my concerns in a single sentence when I pressed him on it. “Any fish that outgrows it’s tank,” he told me, “I will take back in. I’ll even buy them back in…”
Long story short, Martyn has tapped in to a niche of aquarists where giant fish aren’t the dirty word they once were. To be fair, that’s a trend that I’ve seen increasing over the last decade or so, but SIMS not only has the facilities to take back any tankbusters they sell, it also has a network of aquarists with colossal tanks and tropical indoor ponds who are hungry for massive oddballs. One of Martyn’s foremost gripes is that he can’t fulfil a waiting list of aquarists after grown-in goliaths for their own collections.
As well as selling fish, SIMS doubles up as a rescue centre — my visit to the store was cut slightly short when a call came in and Martyn had to race off to save an elderly gentleman’s lifetime collection of fish: one whole barn of freshwater, one barn full of marines, and a whole galaxy of Koi and goldfish. He has the facilities and the contacts to do this.
Slap bang in the middle of the building sits a tropical pond. Measuring 3x3x1.5m (around 13,500 litres) it was only lightly filled with the likes of Paroon sharks and a hefty Redtail catfish, amongst some smaller bits already earmarked to go out to new homes. Much of the hardware recovered in the rescue was subsequently donated to budding hobbyists on a shoestring.
When the building that houses SIMS was first set up it was intended to be a showroom. That lasted just one day before the business was rebranded as a distribution centre the following morning — things got that busy.
After a couple of years of hard use, the facilities do look a little tired, but that doesn’t affect what’s on sale in the tanks. If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to browse inside a fish wholesale facility, that’s a lot what SIMS feel like, with a bedraggled floor and chalk pen prices scrawled directly onto aquaria. It feels ‘working’, which it really is. During my visit, the staff were unrelentingly busy catching and bagging livestock ready for later shipping. While I saw a handful of customers come in and browse through the day, the majority of transactions take place online. Don’t be thwarted by that, SIMS is well worth a visit in person, if only to pick out some oddity you never knew you even needed.
The online side of the business is the core of what SIMS does. The website is divided into two fundamental sections: fish and dry goods. Browsing through the fish section it fast becomes obvious that a little of everything is on offer, from Galaxy rasbora through to Goliath tiger fish and everything in between. At a quick calculation, there are some 1600+ different products available in the tropical fish section of the website alone, and many of those come in the form of bundles — six 3cm assorted Malawi cichlids for £10, for example.
Postage works out as a fixed £20 per box of fish delivered, so whether you’re ordering three Corydoras or ten Silver arowana, add £20 to the final price and that’s what you’re paying. On fish orders over £100, that postage fee is waived.
If what you’re ordering is in stock at the facility, it’ll be posted within 24 hours (and usually the same day if an order comes in through the morning). If it’s something that needs to be ordered in, the guys at SIMS will give you a call and let you know exactly when it’s arriving and when it’ll get to you. For the fanciest stuff from the remotest areas, you might be waiting a week or so.
The dry goods purchasing works much the same, and the products aren’t held on site. Think of SIMS more as the ‘Amazon’ of the fish world. You place your order and the goods are dispatched within 48 hours to arrive at your doorstep. If you’re going in to the physical building, you’ll not find a dry good showroom, or even basic hardware to walk away with in a cash-and-carry transaction. That said, if it’s easier for you to go to the store to collect, SIMS will arrange that for you.
While the premises themselves might not be carrying that much in the way of hardware and sundries, the website is jam packed. Looking for tanks and cabinets? You’ve got biOrbs, Aqua One, Oase, Evolution Aqua, D-D and Red Sea to choose from. Foods? Plenty of NT Labs and Fluval to keep you occupied. The chances are that any staples you’re looking for are there, as long as they’re not too niche.
Having a browse about SIMS is quite the livestock experience.
If you’re old guard, like I am, then expect to see a lot of faces you’ve not spotted in ages. If you’re new to the hobby, you might witness some bits you’ve only ever seen in older books. Certain parts of the stocking are very 80’s in feel, like Clarias catfish (and I’ll be candid, I was really tempted to buy one myself, especially knowing that there’s somewhere for it to go if it gets too big for me) and some big old-school cichlids like Black belts, Midas, and even some normal Jack Dempseys. I’ve only seen the electric blue version of Jack Dempseys for years now, so it was a nice change.
There are some areas that will get a niche hobbyist palpitating. Like Bichirs? I do too, and I’ve never seen such a good spread. A lot of them are big and thick things (thicker than I could probably get my hand around) but there’s smaller for sale stuff too. Polypterus endlicheri, lapradai, weeksii, delhezi, teugelsi, ornatipinnis, palmas, ansorgii, and more.
Flowerhorns might be marmite to aquarists, but as you walk in the store you’re greeted by some ten tanks of them, with prices starting at £10 a fish. They go up from there, and you’ll be forking out around £80
for one of the nicer ones, but you have plenty of options.
Oddballs? Oh my, so many oddballs. I bumped into a tank full of Batrochomoeus trispinosus and fell in love. There was a whole tank of Raiamas senegalensis, which are curious if flighty swimmers that would be amazing in a river biotope. Aba aba, Gymnarchus niloticus, is a fish you’ll rarely see in the flesh, but does need a monster of a tank to house it. Channa bankanensis, the Bangka snakehead, is a less common representative of the family, but if that’s not niche enough then there also plenty of Parachanna obscura available. Spotted congo puffers, Dragon humpback puffers, Thin-bar silver dollars, Electric catfish — quirky fish for days.
Catfish are well represented as well, and not just giants like Redtails and Pangasius. Quite a few nice little armoured cats like Corydoras pulcher are to be found, along with a great representation of Synodontis, and then into far less common bits like Duckbill catfish, Ageneiosus magoi. Peek carefully into the tanks and at the backs of many, huddled around the uplifts and water inlets you’ll spot many a fine plec — some standout Watermelon plecs, Panaque nigrolinetaus laurafabianae, were tubby delights to see.
And yes, there’s plenty of community stuff on offer too. Betta barracks? Check, and not too small ones either. Neons, angelfish and run of the mill barbs and bits? Also check.
Ultimately, it’s the big and unusual fish that’ll stay in your mind though. Whether it’s the massive beasts roaming in the pond, the African arowana on sale, the Giraffe catfish, the hulking Channa marulioides, young Jumper cats, Vulture cats or Tiger shovelnose, you’ll walk away mentally planning where you can tear a wall down in your home and build something worthy of a public aquarium for yourself. The whole store is one indulgent exercise in rummaging, and for the hobbyists who know what they’re looking for, the place is a bit of a little diamond mine with gems waiting to be extracted all over the place.