The Aquarium Stores of Vancouver Canada, Part I: Introduction and The Pet Boutique, by Howard Norfolk

Please note:
These articles, written 2003-4, were intended not just for the benefit of local aquarists and visitors to Vancouver. Rather, they were written as part of the Travel section of Aquarticles, to show people from other cities and countries what the retail aquarium scene was like in Vancouver at that time. The articles will not necessarily be updated and some stores will inevitably move, close, or change ownership. So as time goes on, use caution when using the articles as a guide.

The Aquarium Stores of Vancouver Canada
by Howard Norfolk
Original to Aquarticles.com

Part I: Introduction and the Pet Boutique

I live in Vancouver, British Columbia, a city of over two million people on the West Coast of Canada.
Vancouver is a beautiful city, overlooked by majestic mountains and bisected by inlets of the Pacific Ocean. Its natural surroundings are considered to be in the same league as other favoured cities such as Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, and Sydney Australia.

Click on photos for enlargements, then go "Back"

A view of Vancouver from the North Shore mountains. The forested area in the middle is Stanley Park, a carefully preserved natural wooded peninsula right next to downtown.

Our climate is mild compared to the rest of Canada. It snows just once or twice a year, and even then the snow only stays around for a few days. Instead of snow, we get rain. During autumn, winter, and for that matter spring, it often rains without stopping for days and days at a time -which is not surprising because we live in the "Pacific Coast Rain Forest." The snow stays up in the mountains, where in winter we can ski within a half-hour's drive of the city centre. It is often pointed out that in Vancouver you can ski in the morning and then sail or play golf in the afternoon.

Or you could look at fish in the afternoon! Spectacularly situated in Stanley Park, a large forested peninsula next to the city centre, is the Vancouver Public Aquarium, which has world-class aquarium exhibits and which also conducts research into marine life and carries out conservation projects. See my pictorial article 'A Visit to the Vancouver Aquarium', or visit the Aquarium's own web site.

Aquarists have a choice of clubs to suit various interests. Our general club is the Vancouver Aquatic Hobbyist Club, and there is also the Canada Koi Club of B.C., the Vancouver Area Killifish Club, the Pacific North West Guppy Association (based in the Lower Mainland of B.C.), and the B.C. Betta Association.
The Vancouver Aquatic Plants Group has become dormant for the last year or two, but Steve Pushak would be pleased to hear from local people interested in reviving it. The Vancouver Marine Aquarium Society and the Water Garden Club of B.C. may also still exist, but my e-mails to their publicised contacts have not been answered. (Can anyone advise?).
On the Internet there is a forum, BCAquaria, where local aquarists chat about fishkeeping.

Vancouver also has a good selection of aquarium stores - more than a dozen specialist stores or pet shops that consider themselves aquarium hobbyist destinations, and many more general pet shops and big-box stores with more basic fish departments.

On a rainy Saturday one of my pleasures is to visit my favourite aquarium stores to see what they have that's new or different. Let's take a tour and see what we find...

A note on prices:
Prices quoted in the text are not given just so that local aquarists can shop around for the best deals! The fish you see here have probably been sold by now anyway.
Prices are given simply to give an idea of the relative value of different species, and to show out-of-town readers roughly what we pay here for various fish.
The actual price of a fish may vary seasonally, by size and quality, and according to provenance - locally bred or imported (and from where?). Bargaining is not customary in Vancouver, but many shops give 10% - 25% discounts to members of our Aquarium Club (these discounts were negotiated by me on behalf of the club a few years ago), and others have their own "buyers' clubs" which give credits to regular customers. Buying more than one fish of a species will often reduce the unit price, and some shops have "Fish of the Week" bargains, or have sales - sometimes offering as much as "50% off all fish."
Most of our fish are imported, usually from S.E. Asia, South America or Florida, and the transportation costs and risks involved make them more expensive than in places closer to these sources. Our labour and heating costs are too high to allow large-scale local breeding of inexpensive common fish, but a few locals breed more valuable fish such as discus, angelfish and African cichlids on a semi-commercial basis, and of course hobbyists sometimes trade in the fish they breed.
Not all our fish are as expensive as the examples given in these articles! Most of the fish our stores sell are small common community fish for two or three dollars each. The fish that caught my attention here were the rarer or more special ones, which naturally cost more.

Prices quoted in the text are in Canadian Dollars:
At time of writing Canadian $10 = US $7.20 = Euro 6.36 = UK Pounds 4.46
(We also pay additional government sales taxes of 14.5%)

The Pet Boutique
820 Marine Drive, North Vancouver. 604-987-8711
Does not have e-mail
For location go to MAP

My own LFS (Local Fish Store) is the Pet Boutique, in North Vancouver.

The Pet Boutique was founded by Winston Wing fifteen years ago (1988). Six years ago Winston moved his store to a brand-new building on a busy main road, and set up all-new displays.

Update December 2005: On May 1st 2005 Winson sold the Pet Boutique to Mike Carson. Mike has added ten saltwater tanks, deals in a larger selection of plants, and has re-arranged the dry goods part of the store.

The new Pet Boutique.
I told Winston that his awning looks like it's falling down, but he didn't believe me!

Winston is helped by his wife Sophia, and also, shown here, his daughter Paula, and assistant Terry. Winston's other daughter, Sarah, sometimes helps in the store but is now at college.

North Vancouver is a prosperous suburb on the mountain slopes just across the water from downtown Vancouver, and the Pet Boutique is a general pet store that serves the needs of the affluent families that live there.

Central North Vancouver as seen from Vancouver. The Pet Boutique is just off the picture on the left.

The Pet Boutique sells many kinds of small furry animals - including cats, rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, rats, and mice. The bird section is always noisy with parrots, cockatoos, budgerigars, canaries, finches and waxbills. A whole back room is devoted to reptiles and similar creatures, about which more later. Food and accessories for all these pets are sold. The only things not found are those huge bags of dog and cat food - Winston leaves this side of the market to specialist discounters and "big box" pet stores, of which there are several in the area.

Colourful finches and waxbills sell for $90 to $120 per pair...

... and this cute little purebred Siamese kitten, "vet. checked and vaccinated," could be yours for $500. Ragdoll Siamese kittens are $300.

But fish are probably Winston's main interest, and about half the store is devoted to them. He says that he would like to concentrate on fish even more, but that it is hard to make a living from fish alone, since people nowadays just don't have enough time to keep fish the way they used to. Even when he goes home, Winston has some fish to look after! At home he keeps tropical fish, breeds discus and angelfish, and also has a koi pond.

Winston is of Chinese descent. His grandfather came to the Vancouver area in 1875, which is before the date of the city's official foundation (1886). Winston likes to travel, and in recent years has taken family vacations to China, Africa, Israel and Jordan, and California. Wherever he travels, Winston checks out the local aquarium scene and comes back with some interesting stories.

Let's explore the Fish Department:

One long wall in the dry goods part of the shop is devoted to aquarium accessories, and part of the centre has a selection of aquariums and stands.

At the back is the Fish Room, with 106 tanks, of generous size.

As a general pet shop, the Pet Boutique has many common community fish to fill the aquariums of the children that always seem to be running around excitedly choosing the ones they want. But Winston's personal interest in fish means that his is a hobbyist destination store as well. He sells specialist fish such as specimen quality discus, angelfish, corys, plecos, koi and goldfish. When he comes across them he does not hesitate to pick up rare and unusual fish, and one never knows what Winston will find next! On the day of this visit some of the less common fish in stock included freshwater stingrays ($170), noble gouramis ($13), various unusual corys and plecos, and butterfly goodeids (Ameca splendens).

Winston also sometimes self-imports fish, from South America and South-East Asia, and believes that his was the first independent store to import "Tropica" aquatic plants from Denmark (which are now found in many Vancouver stores). He always has a good selection of these or other plants in stock.

Each tank contains a variety of fish. Zooming up on this photo, we find that it is 'pleco corner.' The upper tank contains "Large corys $7.99, Bushynose plecos $23.99, Amazon tiger plecos $26.99, Gold mollies $5.99." The lower tank has "Albino plecos $39.99, Flamingo cichlids $16.99, Distichodus affinis $26.99, King tiger plecos $59.99, Bristlenose plecos $23.99, Leporinus $29.99."

This is a rainbowfish tank. It contains "Boesemani rainbows $11.99, Turquoise rainbows $11.99, Tri rainbows $11.99, Red inciscus rainbowfish $19.99, assorted small rainbows $11.99, Silver dollars $9.99, Rhino plecos $59.99."

(As you can see, like many other stores, Winston uses the "99c" method of pricing. Elsewhere in these articles I shall round up to the nearest dollar for ease of conversion).

A shoal of rummy nose tetras

Nice little gold nugget plecos ($40), and a sinister looking vampire pleco ($40)

Clown loaches should be bought in groups. They like to swim together.

A gourami not often seen, the noble gourami (Ctenops nobilis) ($13).

The Pet Boutique always has a good selection of goldfish and also koi....

...and discus.

Discus are one of Winston's favourite fish. He breeds them at home, and also in some private tanks high above the display tanks. Climbing up a stepladder to view them, I found that this pair had babies, which can just be seen in the photo as grey blurs.

Reptiles
Next to the Fish Room is a smaller room devoted to reptiles and similar creatures, including various species of geckos, lizards, snakes, tarantulas, scorpions, crabs, frogs, toads, newts, tortoises, skinks, and even cockroaches. I don't keep reptiles myself because they just seem to "sit there" and do nothing, but I appreciate their beauty and variety, and like to check out the reptile departments of pet stores. The Pet Boutique has a very nice Reptile Room.

The Reptile Room.

A collared lizard ($100), a leopard gecko ($70), and a blue-tongued skink ($250).

Chinese fire-bellied toads ($12), and a white-lipped tree frog ($50), (which you might notice has his lunch neatly stored under the log!).

The baby Sulcata tortoise on the left would make a loveable pet for a child. It costs $350. The two female Russian tortoises are $330 each...

...but if tortoises are too expensive, these huge Brazilian cockroaches would make equally cuddly pets for only $13! The smaller Canadian cockroaches seen here are also sold, (as reptile food) at 6 for $6, but I don't think you could get away with giving them as pets...and if you are that cheap, perhaps you could just catch your own! Crickets are also stocked, at a more reasonable price of 500 for $30.

There is a selection of plants for landscaping terrariums

Winston's two little terrier/poodle dogs, "Puppy" and "Cricket" sometimes visit the store, but "Emmy" the parrot is a permanent fixture, and when not in her cage is often found sitting on a stepladder in the fish room (where she can't do as much damage as she does when let loose in the dry goods area). Emmy made headlines in the local paper a couple of years ago, when she was abducted. The publicity must have made someone feel guilty, because three weeks later the front door mysteriously opened and she was thrown back in!

Winston is always keen to learn more about the creatures he sells, and on the day of my visit he and his daughter had just returned from a seminar on reptiles which was hosted by an equipment wholesaler. He is a supporter of our local club, the Vancouver Aquatic Hobbyist Club, attends meetings when the speaker or topic is of interest, donates items to the club's Annual Auction, and gives a discount of 10% off everything except sale items to club members. Every few months Winston has a major sale, offering 50% off all fish! The Pet Boutique is well worth a visit.

Go to Part II: Rain Forest Pet Spectrum