Post updates for LFS Map here

[vinz]

This is a good initiative!

I do notice the trend nowadays is steering towards less "neighborhood" small LFS (those that sell common fishes and cheap equipment) and more "higher end" larger LFS (ie. those that specialize in aquascaping, plants, unique fishes/shrimps etc). The cost of doing business locally keep increasing, so it looks like more and more shops need to deal in higher margin livestock and equipment to sustain their operations.

Personally, i don't really fancy visiting many small LFS that don't stock all the livestock and equipment i want, then end up having to travel around the island trying to shop for stuff... i'd rather there are a few good and large LFS that stock everything i need, so i can just visit one place and buy everything, save time and travel cost.

Same observation. Now the knowledgeable middle to high-end shops that are well stocked in both livestock, plants, equipment and consumables are the trend. I think its because the majority of hobbyists are modern aquarists who are more sophisticated, knowledgeable and are more willing to spend on quality products. We still look for value-for-money, but the value we ask for now is higher. We also buy more products as oppose to the old days where fish food, anti-chlorine and medication are the only recurring buys. We delve in far more complex and sophisticated niches of the hobby like planted, cichlids and shrimps. Even the arowana hobby now has submersible tanning lights, (supposedly) "made for arowana" medications, treatments, vitamins, minerals, etc.

We have busier lives now, especially those with kids... tuition, enrichment, weekly outings, shopping, overseas holidays, over-time... one-stop-shops or clusters are the best option.

Mom & pop shops operators are mostly old, retiring soon and overwhelmed. Their knowledge of the hobby has not widen and I think they may not have the necessary education and inclination to pursue the "complex science" of the comparatively new niches. Their "old wisdoms" are now considered "old wives tales", outdated or considered unproven by the newly educated hobbyists. The tiny marketplace shops have no space for all the new fangled treatments, fertilisers, equipment from nano to sumo, 100 varieties of gravel and soil, beautiful wood and rocks. The investment far exceeds their total rent in a year!

Seems to me there is a decline in the number of arowana specialists shops too.

That said, I still subscribe to some of the "old wisdoms" that I picked up from my dad. Such as tank cycling without bacteria-in-a-bottle, but backed up with science and understanding.

Shifu UA is right.
Perhaps in future, it may be good to have an "Aquatic Mall" somewhere centrally located.
It could be an aquatic version of Funan Centre or Sim Lim Square where many companies of the same trade come under one roof.

It's called Serangoon North. LOL! Well, though it still has a number of LFS and other pet shops in close proximity, it definitely has seen better days. Although it is geographically quite central, no MRT station is near enough.

C328 is starting to become a mini-cluster and MRT is just 5 minutes away.


Malls sound expensive. I just want 1 to maybe 4 clusters of shophouses in different parts of the island walking minutes from MRT (but not so near to overly raise rent) and ample parking.

[vinz]

Oh... is it the one at Jln Besar plaza and facing kitchener road?? I no longer see it couple of years back.

Yeah.. LFS keep closing down.. Lesser people are into fish keeping now.

I'm not quite sure the hobby is dying. More of a consolidation of LFSes from many well distributed small basic shops to consolidated one-stop shops or clusters.

Traffic in forums are declining, with many people migrating to the comparatively more interactive and instantaneous, but myopic and short-term memory of FB Pages and Groups. Same old questions are asked there and answers repeated, but in lower quality. Searching in FB is still a joke, so knowledge is lost.

Perhaps it is not a bad thing. The impatient, no-brain, ask-holes noobs and the glory seeking know-it-alls all go there and leave the quality interactions on the forums. My brain is mulling on how to leverage on FB for forums. In the forum industry, I have not seen anyone come up with a good way to leverage FB for forum traffic, other then actively sharing posts to FB and FB-login.

Also on forums, there is still a certain degree of anonymity that many people prefer. On FB, anonymity is non-existent if you are active.

[tetrakid]

Oh... is it the one at Jln Besar plaza and facing kitchener road?? I no longer see it couple of years back.

Yeah.. LFS keep closing down.. Lesser people are into fish keeping now.

Unless someone can create another fad such as the "Luohan Boom" where everyone wants to receive wealth luck and HUAT.

Nowadays got shrimp craze, but it's not as widespread as the Luohan craze because shrimps is not about HUAT.
When it come to HUAT, everyone wants to grab a share too.

[tetrakid]

...........

It's called Serangoon North. LOL! Well, though it still has a number of LFS and other pet shops in close proximity, it definitely has seen better days. Although it is geographically quite central, no MRT station is near enough.

Ye, Petwalk at Serangoon North is one of my favourite places. Got Vet too.
Also go many Ahpeks gather there regularly with their birds too. It's quite a fun place.

[vinz]

Unless someone can create another fad such as the "Luohan Boom" where everyone wants to receive wealth luck and HUAT.

Nowadays got shrimp craze, but it's not as widespread as the Luohan craze because shrimps is not about HUAT.
When it come to HUAT, everyone wants to grab a share too.

I for one will not like another LH boom. When that happened, lots of items were out of stock and lots of inferior quality stuff came into market. Lots ah beng fly-by-night ignorant shops opened up. There were a few fires in homes caused by inferior filters overheating when their short attention span owners neglected to top up water. Hair salons and the like were giving away LH babies for free. LH were dumped into our water ways and water bodies, where they thrived and decimating other fish species. Bad fish-keeping habits abounded for a while because the LH is so tough you could house it in a too-small tank with poor filtration and it would still survive. If you pour out 90% of the water and top up with tap water, it won't be affected. People would bring those habits to their next fish if they didn't eventually lose interest in fish keeping.

Good LFSes took a hit too, after the initial boom. They were undercut by all the new no-foresight-LFS competing for branded stock and importing cheapo equipment. The legit LFSes weren't happy about it. When the LH boom died, some legit shops died too because they couldn't compete in the quickly dwindling market because some of the LH shops were still undercutting them. Thankfully, the cheapo brand and unsustainable LH shops eventually exited the market and most things were back to normal.

I remember not being able to get Hikari Frozen Blood Worms and had to try some the China brand which were discoloured, smelly and full of dirt and sand. Threw out the whole lot.

Sure, got LFS boom, but not interesting shops. And eventually those LFSes collapse and die. The huat hobbyists mostly left the hobby too. Not sustainable, no point.

[vinz]

There were many "fads" that eventually matured to a smaller but fairly sustainable following:

• Arowana
• Guppies
• Gold fish
• Koi
• Discus
• Planted
• Apistos
• Monster Cichlids
• Malawi and Tanganyika Cichlids
• Killifish
• Pleco
• Wild Bettas
• Fancy Bettas
• Shrimp

[Bern C]

I'm not quite sure the hobby is dying. More of a consolidation of LFSes from many well distributed small basic shops to consolidated one-stop shops or clusters.

Traffic in forums are declining, with many people migrating to the comparatively more interactive and instantaneous, but myopic and short-term memory of FB Pages and Groups. Same old questions are asked there and answers repeated, but in lower quality. Searching in FB is still a joke, so knowledge is lost.

Perhaps it is not a bad thing. The impatient, no-brain, ask-holes noobs and the glory seeking know-it-alls all go there and leave the quality interactions on the forums. My brain is mulling on how to leverage on FB for forums. In the forum industry, I have not seen anyone come up with a good way to leverage FB for forum traffic, other then actively sharing posts to FB and FB-login.

Also on forums, there is still a certain degree of anonymity that many people prefer. On FB, anonymity is non-existent if you are active.

Yeah... Totally agree with you & UA

I doubt this hobby will die but more of transition with time. Last time more of amateur fish keeping and can be as simple. I believe also more younger fish keepers. But now, people are more toward professional, plants keeping, exotic fish keeping, sophisticated equipments etc. Eventually the traditional LFS will be obsoleted if they can't keep up with the trend.
Be it amateur or professional, I think the fun part is the process. Observing and learning new stuff about the fish, water and plant. Also lots of trails and errors experiment.

Yeah.. For me FB is only for news, update and general discussion. @_@ There's no classification of posts in FB so I ended up gotta scrolls and scrolls and scrolls. There are many local aquarium groups that I dunno which to join. I still prefer forum over FB as it' neat and easier to look for topics I wanna read.
AQ has a fb page?? XD I didn't know that... as I came across AQ through googling. I chose AQ over others local forums as it's a one stop forum, very active and rich with knowledge and experience shared by pioneers, veteran and adventurers. XD Also because it has a beginner corner for newbie like me.

Unless someone can create another fad such as the "Luohan Boom" where everyone wants to receive wealth luck and HUAT.

Nowadays got shrimp craze, but it's not as widespread as the Luohan craze because shrimps is not about HUAT.
When it come to HUAT, everyone wants to grab a share too.

XD I Luohan is a up, down and almost vanished. =X Maybe it will HUAT ARH... when someone managed to breed a specie of shrimp that has numbers.

[Urban Aquaria]

Unless someone can create another fad such as the "Luohan Boom" where everyone wants to receive wealth luck and HUAT.

Nowadays got shrimp craze, but it's not as widespread as the Luohan craze because shrimps is not about HUAT.
When it come to HUAT, everyone wants to grab a share too.

Yeah, maybe some innovative shrimp breeders can create a new line of shrimps that a bred with the shape of prosperity symbol on their shells, or maybe a series of dots and patterns which people can count to get 4D numbers (or whatever that they can say is "lucky" or "prosperous", its all about smart marketing), then start promoting the heck out of it. Might catch on and become the new fad in time for CNY 2016.

[limz_777]

Unless someone can create another fad such as the "Luohan Boom" where everyone wants to receive wealth luck and HUAT.

Nowadays got shrimp craze, but it's not as widespread as the Luohan craze because shrimps is not about HUAT.
When it come to HUAT, everyone wants to grab a share too.

if i remember correctly this fad was due to where the owner is able to see 4d number on the fish , and they started selling toto number floating balls or something , craze gone all end up in our local reservoir

[tetrakid]

if i remember correctly this fad was due to where the owner is able to see 4d number on the fish , and they started selling toto number floating balls or something , craze gone all end up in our local reservoir

This one also went into the Kallang River.
luohan.jpg
I like Luohan with no forehead bulge.

[BFG]

There were many "fads" that eventually matured to a smaller but fairly sustainable following:

• Arowana
• Guppies
• Gold fish
• Koi
• Discus
• Planted
• Apistos
• Monster Cichlids
• Malawi and Tanganyika Cichlids
• Killifish
• Pleco
• Wild Bettas
• Fancy Bettas
• Shrimp

Vinz, you left out the dark side of the aquatic hobby, the marine side. This side of the hobby was hit too when the animation, Finding Nemo was created. Kids around the world wanted to own Nemo and Dory. Till now, I get irritated when someone pointed to a clownfish and called it Nemo. And I've heard part 2 is in the works! Another round of senseless death to this fish! Whoopie!

[tetrakid]

Vinz, you left out the dark side of the aquatic hobby, the marine side. This side of the hobby was hit too when the animation, Finding Nemo was created. Kids around the world wanted to own Nemo and Dory. Till now, I get irritated when someone pointed to a clownfish and called it Nemo. And I've heard part 2 is in the works! Another round of senseless death to this fish! Whoopie!

Not as irritated as me with those so-called Sea Monkeys.

How brine shrimp can be treated as though they are monkeys shows how gullible and impressionable human beings (those happy Sea-Monkey owners) can be.

[cumzilla]

for this thread and TS. Think this is the most updated thread in terms of getting info. on the whereabouts of LFSs in sg. Google many times for LFS locations, mostly are outdated threads from other forums with the last update 4-5 years ago. Hope bros and sis here will keep this thread going for the benefits of all when they need info. on a particular location of LFS they want to go to.

[cumzilla]

I will contribute an update also. Think Hougang Aquarium and Pets Centre already closed down. Went last week and walked up and down the row of shops couple of times but couldnt locate it. Remember only went there once before, think it was late last year, talked to the owner abit. Told me barely surviving, had been thinking to close down for good but those who frequent his shop had urged him to carry on. Also shared to me that in those 'peak years', hougang alone had 20 over LFSs, now only left his, NKS and 2 more at hougang ave 8. So now hougang only left 3 LFSs.

[vinz]

Cumzilla, did you hunt for it purely by memory of previous visit or based on the address in the map? Thanks.

[cumzilla]

Cumzilla, did you hunt for it purely by memory of previous visit or based on the address in the map? Thanks.

har? didnt i mention that i went last week, mayb i will visit again this weekend to confirm if i happen to pass by, cos i did not have the exact unit no. when i was there. Or better if someone staying nearby can confirm whether it still in existence

[tetrakid]

har? didnt i mention that i went last week, mayb i will visit again this weekend to confirm if i happen to pass by, cos i did not have the exact unit no. when i was there. Or better if someone staying nearby can confirm whether it still in existence

Often LFS open quite late in the day, some around noon time or later. I have experiencedit a few times when I went too early,

I think the reason is that usually there's little or no business in the mornings. Also, small LFSs are not very profitable to run.

[cumzilla]

confirmed closed down already.

[vinz]

har? didnt i mention that i went last week, mayb i will visit again this weekend to confirm if i happen to pass by, cos i did not have the exact unit no. when i was there. Or better if someone staying nearby can confirm whether it still in existence

Was wondering whether you were trying to find it last week purely by memory from previous visit or you went down with the address in our LFS map.

confirmed closed down already.

Ok. Thanks for verifying.

[cumzilla]

Was wondering whether you were trying to find it last week purely by memory from previous visit or you went down with the address in our LFS map.

Ok. Thanks for verifying.

no problem, tomolo mayb will go scout the areas where the LFSs are relatively near each other.