I stopped into Premier Pet Supply in Beverly Hills this week and was pleasantly surprised with the variety of cichlids they keep in stock. I didn't even know they sold live fish and thought it was strictly a supply store--as it was in the past--but they do have a live fish section now! They only have around 20ish tanks, but its almost all cichlids. Africans specifically, but they have a couple new worlds as well. The guy in charge of the fish section (Sean) is part of this forum (how I found out about them) and very knowledgeable. I spoke with him for awhile and he mentioned that they order from a wide range of distributors and breeders rather than your standard asian fish farms. Its always nice to see a store allow a hobbyist run a section rather than just go with a basic, bread and butter, setup with little variety. I'm mostly into tangs, so thats what caught my eye (Cyprichromis, gold occies, and red bishop tropheus to name a few) but they also had some decent malawi fish like malawi hawks and Buccos and some really nice SRT hongi. Definitely one of those stores where you never know what you're going to see when you go in, with helpful and knowledgeable staff which I feel is what most people want. I know I do.
Thanks for the kind words! Since I took over that section a couple of years ago I've pretty much made it my mission to bring back the fish/reptile sections. The store started as mostly fish back in the 90s and has kind of dwindled off since then. I try to mix up our orders every time to get a decent selection, but we're definitely limited on space.
Dog and cat food is always what we've been known for, but Quinn (the girl that helps take care of things back there when I can't be there) and I definitely bust our butts between college and the store to keep everything running smoothly and slowly growing.
Because of the limited tank space, I try to set us apart in other ways with some of the products that I carry instead of keeping everything that you can find at PetSmart and Petco. Northfin Fish Foods, handmade aquarium decor, Universal Rocks backgrounds and decor (coming soon), Xtreme Fish Foods (coming soon), almost all of Seachem's line (including aquavitro), Acrylic Tank Manufacturing (the company from the show Tanked), Seapora/Aquarium Masters, Eheim, Two Little Fishies, and more are just some of the things I try to keep on the shelf to keep customers coming back to us.
On top of that, I've tried to eradicate all of the little hormoned fish out of Asia as much as I can (as you mentioned) and we're now ordering from tons of smaller-scale companies and as many local people as possible to keep a good, healthy stock. As of this year, we're now ordering from Mike's Cichlids, Old World Exotics, Nautilus Tropical Fish, RareFishUSA, Cichlids Are Special, The Cichlid Exchange, Tom's Tanganyikans, etc., and I'm currently working on starting to hopefully import some stuff from Europe and Malawi. It's a lot of work but I'm glad to finally see it paying off!
If you (or anyone else) are interested, I send out a weekly newsletter (typically on Fridays) that highlights anything new and cool that we got that week (normally with pictures) as well as products and such. I attach our stock list (which is always public on the web and takes me hours every week to update) as well with pricing and as many pictures as I can get while I'm unbagging orders. The link to sign up for that is here
http://eepurl.com/dC3bQ1 if anyone wants to check it out. We're always glad to support local clubs and hobbyists, so if anyone is ever needing anything, let me know. I'll always hook MCA members up with good deals. Chris should have some nice Albino Tropheus brichardi "Kipili" showing up this week
