That Fish Place retail outlet

[jbundas]

If you ever find yourself in southeastern PA, find the time to stop at the That Fish Place (That Pet Place) warehouse store, especially if you're behind the wheel of high cargo capacity vehicle. I grew up not far from this place and made regular trips there back in the fresh water days. The latest stop was to support the big project:
http://www.bostonreefers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=35031
The idea is pretty much Sam's club for the aquarium hobby. Here's the main entrance:

and some display tanks just inside:

 

[jbundas]

Here's an idea of the meat of it all:

Everything at catalog prices. If you're local enough, you can take advantage of various special sales as well. Back in the day, the 2nd Saturday of every month meant 50% off all freshwater livestock, 25% off all salt water livestock, and 25% off dry goods.

 

[jbundas]

Here's what I came for:

IO at $32/bucket with no shipping...I'll take one...pallet

And some substrate.

 

[jbundas]

Can't miss a little of NE's own either:

A much bigger showing that last year Jon - lookin good.

 

[jbundas]

They definitely have the livestock covered as well. Here's a big ray pool for the kids:

There's also separate rooms for the live birds, reptiles, and small animals.

 

[jbundas]

The liquid life selection is pretty much second to none though. There's a whole room just for life freshwater plants. Here is one of the many fresh and brackish tank aisles:

They used to have all the tanks numbers so you can keep track of what you want. There's a full bagging station complete with supermarket deli style serve-by-number system. Just grab a little pink number and wait to be called.

 

[jbundas]

This is looking out over the salt water section:

You can see a little of the bagging station on the right. They do a nice job packing stuff up with plastic inside of paper inside of plastic the pumping it up with compressed air. The acrylic blue tank rows in the middle are all fish. There's an open top coral row towards the far end. The far wall is mainly inverts.

 

[jbundas]

Here's the coral section:

Not a ton in the way of sps but quiet a good variety of all sorts of stuff.

 

[jbundas]

The place is right off of Route 30 - Centerville exit, probably 10-15 minutes west of the outlet area and Dutch Wonderland. Just one caution though, I recommend not going through there on Black Friday and avoiding the deep Amish country on Sundays...unless you like driving 10 mph behind buggy after buggy.

 

[Mr. Slippery]

I'm going to check it out next week. We go there often and I never even knew it existed.

 

[jbundas]

There really is no local advertisement to speak of. You wouldn't know it's there unless you knew it was there. Head south after you get off 30 and it'll be on your left. Just look for the Great White sticking out of the building.

 

[cobraz]

It's a good drive, if you go during the summer you can hit Hershey Park for the kids at the same time. I like to go once a year and stock up.

 

[KAS]

I love this place. We've stopped by there on our way back from Baltimore. A bit out of the way but well worth it.

ETA: It's great to see you posting again Jason.

 

[clamm]

sweet not too far from me now I will have to make a trip.

 

[GinaD]

Waaaaay back when I had my 55-gal FO tank, all they had was a catalogue.

I think we should do a pooled order. They're having a sale...

http://www.thatpetplace.com/MainPro/IndexFishFF.aspx

 

[BrianMac]

BRS field trip??????

 

[Frag Freaks]

How is their livestock and corals priced? I am thinking about making the trip one weekend

 

[jbundas]

Their livestock prices were about average, but the selection is good. You can get pretty good quantity discount pricing on clean-up crew. They had a ton of all the different standard kind of liverock when I was there also, ranged from 4.99-6.99/lb though so no huge savings there. If you can score one of the sale days that's when you can really clean up. I'm not sure how to find out about them though, maybe something on their website. I've never looked though. They have great prices on drygoods since they can buy them by the truck-load. Livestock is still livestock ya know - gotta cover the cost of the stuff that doesn't live and the upkeep of the system. Having more quantity doesn't give you as much of an economic benefit.

They do have a lot of really unique stuff that you don't see very often in the fish and inverts department though.

 

[Mr. Slippery]

I was down there this weekend and stopped by to check it out. I only picked up some drygoods and frozen food. I could have spent all day if I could afford it. It's pretty much like walking through a Marine Depot catalog or something I was really impressed with the wide selection of everything. The fish room was o.k., they don't have as many corals as I expected, and you're right about the livestock prices (same as anywhere) but I did like most of the LPS prices. They had 3 or 4 nice diplos and some other favia at least 6"+ for like $50 bucks or so--real nice colonies.

A couple cool things about the place was the motorized light rails on the coral tanks, and the HUGE skimmer they have. I'd also like to go in the spring and summer and see it when all the koi ponds are running. Definately worth checking out if your in the area and want to go home broke

 

[deadhermitwalkin]

Wow...great looking place!! Like the Bj's of fish goods....do they sell gallon buckets of mayo? =)