Hey Folks,
Welp, it's that time of the year again. Time to have "the talk".
It's almost Summer (it's definitely here already in Florida....currently 90 degrees outside as I type this). And with Summer weather comes the inevitable dip in your customers' attention to their fish tanks. I worked retail for years before coming to Nautilus, so I know all too well that summer slow-down can really hurt. So, with that in mind, Nautilus Wholesale is rolling out something we think will be a huge help to everybody for these slow summer months: Every Day Low Price specials!
The idea is to give you 10 solid fish you need to never run out of stock on, top selling popular items. We are HEAVILY discounting these, way below what we ever would for our normal weekly specials. We're hoping that by offering these unchanging specials every week for the next few months you can plan around ordering with us much better. You can plan weekend sales events to get people in the door, with the knowledge that you know the exact cost of at least those 10 fish if you need to come up with some big sales to keep the money flowing. Or, if you're one of the lucky stores that doesn't experience much summer slowdown, you can make some killer profit margins using those fish. You absolutely should be shopping around and not just sticking your whole order with one supplier because it's "easier" to get all your restocks from whoever's delivering your hamsters and feeder rats, save every nickel you can on costs and it will make a huge difference in your store's profitability year over year. If you go through even just 50 neon tetras in a week and you pay $1.00 for them from somebody else instead of our new $0.54 EDLP special, you're overpaying by $100 a month just from that one single item not being bought at an optimized price.
In more exciting stuff that you'd rather read about, I do have a new fish for you that we haven't had in a while! Fundulus Chrysotus, or the "Golden Topminnow". These are FL collected, but are a native fish that ranges all the way up into the Carolinas, although from what I hear they're much more rare further north. These are a Killifish species that honestly rivals any imported Killifish for beauty, but you can buy them at a fraction of the price. They're 2-3 inches long right now, and most are showing full adult coloration, a solid gold body with bright red spots for the males. The females are a brown body with GOLD spots. Very cool fish. They're peaceful, don't bother anything in the tank, and like to hang out near the surface, especially under floating vegetation (I catch them hanging out underneath lily pads or clumps of frogbit). I did also restock us on Pygmy Sunfish again (seriously, thank you all who have been blowing these out as quick as I can bring them in, it's super cool to see how in demand some of these little fish I catch in the swamps around here are).
I don't think there was much in the way of imported new stuff, other than a restock on the guppies like always as well as Gold Dojo Loaches coming back in. We got limited numbers of normal Dojo also, but I'm not going to put that on the stock list. There's a handful for whoever mentions them based on reading this email.
We also forgot to get pictures of a fair amount of Central American Cichlids that came in last week, so we're including them here now for you. They're all on the stock list, but I know everybody wants the pics. Cuban cichlids in two sizes, some WAY oversized 5 inch Heckelli (more like 6-7 inch), 5 inch red devils, and 5 inch Geo Brasiliensis.
--Steven
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| Blue Phantom Plecos got forgotten about on the Friday email also, but they did come in from Colombia last week so we're back in stock. List says small but they're not super small. I'd honestly call them mediums, but our options to name them were small or large, so we went with small. |
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| Pygmy Sunfish restocked. Photo taken about 15 seconds after getting scooped up in the wild. They'll be brown when they show up in the bag, but give them a day to settle in and the males look just like this. Beautiful little fish. They sort of remind me of Scarlet badis in the way they behave. I fully understand why these are as popular as they are. |
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| Golden Topminnow. A Killifish native to a good chunk of the USA with stunning colors. Can be bred in captivity quite easily if you'd like, and even the females still have some gold spots on them so they're not just ugly brown fish like the female Gardneri Killifish are. |
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| Tinfoil Barbs are back after a solid year of being unavailable. They're running small, as to be expected from the first batch in stock in 12 months. It's hard to find a hardier fish though. These can go in community tanks all the way up to big Oscar tanks (as long as the Oscars cant eat them whole) |
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| Cuban Cichlids available in both 2 and 3 inches. One of the best looking CA Cichlids, should be way more popular. |
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| 5 inch Geo Brasiliensis. These are maybe slightly oversized on average, showing great blue color already. The fins are surprisingly good, considering usually these beat eat other up pretty bad. We have them 1 per tank right now to keep them looking good for you. |
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| 5" Red Devil are back and again mostly piebald like last time! |
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| "5 inch" Geophagus Heckelli are more like 6 inch, maybe 6 counting streamers. Absolutely huge. I think we have a fair number sold already, so not sure how many more days they'll be available, but you should still definitely at least try to get these on your order. |
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| LG E.B. Acara are very nice looking, and about the same price as the medium size, which makes sense this week, since they're roughly the same size as the mediums. The LG are maybe a half inch bigger. |
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Reptile & Amphibian Highlights
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Another solid reptile update this week! Turtles are in stock, I know tons of you have been asking for Turtles. Mud and Sidenecks are much better pet turtles than Sliders, and honestly it's irresponsible to sell sliders to 99% of the people that would be buying them, so I don't mind that they're never on our availability. There's some really cool stuff this week too for those of you that like to have reptiles beyond the typical "Petsmart" variety..... Bairds rat snakes, Star Agamas, adult Desert Kings, and the extremely popular True Emperor Scorpions are back!
Frogs also got a nice restock, with Red and Black Walking Frogs, as well as FOUR different morphs of Pac Man Frogs. The Camo PacMan are my favorite, they have an olive green color that looks super cool. Worth the extra 3 bucks over a normal green for sure.
Please join USARK-Florida, even if you're not a Florida resident or business. Membership is free and you can sign up here: USARK-FL Membership. |
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| Bearded Dragon |
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