Tannin Aquatics Posted March 20, 2016 Report Share Posted March 20, 2016 Hi everyone, My name is Scott Fellman, and I'm excited to be the newest sponsor here on The Shrimp Spot! I'd just like to introduce myself and my company! My company, Tannin Aquatics, specializes in offering aquarists a curated collection of natural products and other goods for creating cool biotope aquarium displays. Our aquatic botanicals are used by biotope aquarium lovers, aquascaping fans, vivarium and riparium lovers, and of course...shrimp keepers! I have been a lifelong aquarium enthusiast, both fresh and saltwater, and have been in the business side of the aquarium world for over a decade. I recently sold my ownership interest in Unique Corals (www.uniquecorals.com), which specialized in marine livestock, and of course, corals! Although I have kept freshwater fishes my whole life, I am not particularly well known in the freshwater aquarium world! In the reef aquarium world, I am quite the opposite, being a globally recognized author and speaker, actively talking at aquarium clubs around the world, as well as the major conferences, such as MACNA, IMAC, Reefapalooza, etc. I regularly contribute to sites like Reef Builders, as well as hosting a forum on the Reefkeeping site, reef2reef, where I blog about a variety of topics. And of course, jumping into the business side of the freshwater hobby has been a long-time goal of mine. Tannin Aquatics started operations in August of 2015, and has enjoyed steady growth and brand recognition. We are constantly refining our product offerings and service to give our customers consistently excellent experiences every time they order. If you check our our website, you'll find an extensive variety of materials that you can use for your shrimp, as well as other tropical fish and herp needs. We pride ourselves on being just a bit different than what you're used to in the realm of aquatic vendors, and we think you'll know why after your first visit to our site. Our orientation, aesthetic, attitudes, and high emphasis on personalized customer service and quality are hallmarks of our business. We are not a bargain-basement vendor, nor are we ridiculously high end. We offer quality items at fair prices. We don't aim to offer every item on the market. In fact, you'll probably note that we don't have many of the more "regular" items you can find on any vendor's site. Rather, we offer items that we ourselves use and believe in, and each item is part of a bigger story. In fact, this excerpt from our "About Us" page form our website summarizes our whole mission: "Tannin's story really began with my lifelong love for all things aquatic, and a vision to provide freshwater tropical fishes with the most natural captive environments possible. Environments with a certain look. A certain feel. A certain vibe. Earthy. Organic. Natural. The name “Tannin” was selected because it’s the substance derived from leaves and wood that tints the life-giving waters of tropical rivers and streams with a beautiful brown color that I find so alluring. The dark waters, tangled roots and earthy colored leaves found off the shores of tropical “blackwater” rivers, ponds, and streams provide an irresistible subject for hobbyists to replicate in our aquariums. Our tagline, "Leaves, Wood, Water, Life" perfectly summarizes our aesthetic, our offerings, our point of view- and our mission. The passion behind Tannin comes from my desire to provide fellow aquatic hobbyists with a carefully curated selection of aquarium products, along with information, inspiration, and appreciation for creating representations of the beautiful world that exists where land meets water. We’re all about fostering aquatic creativity. We offer cool natural materials to create distinctive aquarium displays, and provide fish breeders with products they can use to practice their craft. We're big believers of investing the time and committing to the process of aquascaping and developing excellent environments for our fishes. We like to think that doing something with our aquariums is more fun than just looking at them. Our "aquatic botanicals" are intended for use in aquariums, terrariums, vivariums, paludariums, and ripariums, and offer unique aesthetics to help you create memorable displays. Based in Los Angeles, California, our thing is to offer fellow hobbyists the kind of stuff that gets us excited. Weather it’s unusual aquascaping materials, aquatic botanicals, that hard-to-find "small batch" fish food with the local cult following, specialty aquarium hardware, substrate additives, or stuff for fish breeders- everything that we sell is something that we use and believe in. We don't offer everything under the sun. Just stuff that fits our vision, our vibe, our aesthetic. Stuff that comes from quality, reliable, and responsible sources. Stuff that we know will get YOU excited, too. We're not a bargain-priced, super-high-volume discount vendor. We offer quality, premium products at a fair price. Each and every aquatic botanical is hand-selected and packed to order, with care and consideration- the same consideration we'd use if we were adding it to our own aquarium. We're constantly searching for new items that fit our aesthetic and vision to add to our collection, and editing our offerings to remove items that don't conform to our evolving vision. And we support all of this good stuff with a level of personal service that we know will keep you coming back for more! Your satisfaction is everything to us, and I promise that we'll do everything possible to give you a great experience when working with us. Every single time. I know that passion matters in this hobby. And passion drives everything that we do at Tannin. We hope to be a reliable, friendly, and useful resource for you to turn to when you want to create unique, natural-looking aquatic displays. As you may have already surmized- we aren’t your "typical" aquarium products vendor. We don't ever want to be. And we're just getting started! Come evolve with us. To check out more of our stories and what inspires us, check out our blog." We are very active on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We don't dabble! We produce regular, daily content for our customers and fans to enjoy, share, comment on. A new blog is up on our website each and every day for you to enjoy. We want you to really have a great experience with our company and we think that our blog, Facebook page, and Instagram feeds are awesome places to start. We have begun production of very high-quality videos featuring some of our concept builds, and the first one was just released last week, with many more to come! I'm very excited to be here, and look forward to working with many of you in the near future. Should you have any need to contact me directly, my email is: tannin aquatics@gmail.com Once again, thanks for welcoming me into your community. I hope to keep a pretty active sponsor forum with regular updates once it's activated. Stay Wet! Scott Fellman, Owner Tannin Aquatics mayphly and adrand 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
warlock Posted March 20, 2016 Report Share Posted March 20, 2016 Welcome...i was looking at ur website last week!!! Some good looking stuff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tannin Aquatics Posted March 20, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2016 Welcome...i was looking at ur website last week!!! Some good looking stuff Thanks very much! We're constantly re-evaluating and editing make sure that we have a cool variety of stuff. The neat thing is that many experienced hobbyists are starting to use aquatic botanicals for the first time, and getting really cool results, in terms of interesting aquaecapes and tangible benefits, such as fish and invert health, etc. We're all sort of evolving totgther, and it's a lot of fun. Just let us know if there is anything we can do to improve the experience! -Scott Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrand Posted March 20, 2016 Report Share Posted March 20, 2016 Very interesting variety on your site. Cant wait to try some out! Thanks for joining shrimpspot. Tannin Aquatics 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tannin Aquatics Posted March 20, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2016 Very interesting variety on your site. Cant wait to try some out! Thanks for joining shrimpspot. You're quite welcome. Ironically, I was a little late getting to the party...A bunch of our customers who are shrimp fans said, "Whay aren't you on Shrimpspot?" How could I say no? In future posts, we can highlight some of the aquatic botanicals that ourselves and our customers have found to be great with shrimp...lots of cool stuff to play with! -Scott Soothing Shrimp and fishface 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishprinceofca Posted March 20, 2016 Report Share Posted March 20, 2016 Welcome! Nice line of products! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tannin Aquatics Posted March 20, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2016 Welcome! Nice line of products! Thanks so much...Still an evolving process...Although we have a very concise niche, it still covers a lot of territory, and we're always trying to "edit" to stay on target for what our customers are looking for. Thoughts and suggestions to improve are always welcome! -Scott Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shrimp Life Posted March 20, 2016 Report Share Posted March 20, 2016 Beautiful Website. And very cool products! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tannin Aquatics Posted March 20, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2016 Beautiful Website. And very cool products! Thank you very much! We'll keep doing our best to improve the site, the products, and the customer experience every day...That's our goal, and we have a long way to go! -Scott Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amyers22 Posted March 21, 2016 Report Share Posted March 21, 2016 Welcome to Shrimpspot! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tannin Aquatics Posted March 21, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 21, 2016 Welcome to Shrimpspot! Thanks; looking forward to getting to know a lot of you! -Scott Amyers22 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vpier Posted March 21, 2016 Report Share Posted March 21, 2016 I see a lot of your sample packs are geared towards South America. Most shrimps come from Asia/S.E. Asia. Besides your Camaroa Bolsa pack, is there another sampler you would recommend for shrimps? I have enough of the basic leaves and cholla to last a while. What I'm really interested in is the pods/cones and I think pods are very new to most people. Not being familiar with pods and what/how they can affect water parameters makes me a little hesitant in ordering. Shrimps are a lot more sensitive to changes than fish and it sounds like pods are more potent than leaves. To bad you didn't have some kind pod sampler pack for shrimps. mayphly and svetilda 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tannin Aquatics Posted March 21, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 21, 2016 I see a lot of your sample packs are geared towards South America. Most shrimps come from Asia/S.E. Asia. Besides your Camaroa Bolsa pack, is there another sampler you would recommend for shrimps? I have enough of the basic leaves and cholla to last a while. What I'm really interested in is the pods/cones and I think pods are very new to most people. Not being familiar to pods and what/how they can affect water parameters makes me a little hesitant in ordering. Shrimps are a lot more sensitive to changes than fish and it sounds like pods are more potent than leaves. To bad you didn't have some kind pod sampler pack for shrimps. I agree. Many of our pods are geared towards a South American fish aesthetic, although, ironically, many of the botanicals we offer actually come from Asia! We received a lot of feedback from shrimp keepers about our offerings, and were encouraged to participate in this forum to get more exposure for aquatic botanicals within the shrimp keeping community, which is pretty cool! That being said,caution is always warranted. Most anything we place in the water can affect the environmental parameters (leaves, cones, etc), and it would be entirely irresponsible of me to say that everyone should just go nuts and add all of these things without caution to their prized shrimp systems! I can tell you that, based on our observations and experience, most of the "pods" seem to impart far less tannins and humic acids into the water than do most of the leaves more commonly utilized in our systems, so it's actually been the other way around in my experience and that of our customers. Of course, they still influence the water to some extent. You can experiment by placing some botanicals in a known quantity of aquarium water in a separate container and doing ga simple before/after pH test, etc. You'll find that they definitely will influence water chemistry, and certainly influence the tint to the water. However, I've frequently been surprised to find that the Ph, for example, is not altered as much as I would have expected. A lot of it depends upon the parameters of the source water your astartying with, the size of the tank, filtration, etc. Because we are talking about natural materials of varying sizes, and many different situations for shrimp keepers, experimentation is the real way that hobbyists are going to know what works for them. We're still learning much about them, and encourage responsible experimentation by shrimp keepers. I can tell you from personal experience, and from that of many of our customers who are shrimp keepers, that any of the botanicals we offer will work fine. The real key is to go SLOWLY when adding stuff to an established system. You can easily kill aquariums by overdoing anything. As someone who comes from an advanced reef keeping background (particularly coral propagation) I have seen first hand what happens when people go "hog wild" and overdo adding things into their tanks. The key with botanicals is to go slowly. Remember, these are terrestrial items and will decompose in water at varying rates, and, if added in huge quantities, can place a significant and potentially problematic bioload into the system, stressing the animals severely. This is no different than overloading a system with Catappa leaves, or any of the other leaves we use as foods (Amaranth, Mulberry, etc.).To take the time to observe the impact of anything added to the environment, be it leaves, driftwood, pods, even rocks...is basic aquaristic common sense, and we encourage everyone to proceed slowly. I have not had any reports of issues from the many customers we have who use the botanicals with shrimp- when they follow the simple premise of preparing the materials before use, going slowly and observing what happens. Our "Camarao Bolsa" was assembled with items that, right off the bat, work perfectly with shrimps. It's the one pack we have specifically targeted at shrimp keepers and we receive great feedback about it. Again, I have tried many of the other botanicals we offer with a variety of shrimps; always slowly, always observing, and have experienced no losses, nor have my "beta testers" who have played with many of the botanicals we offer in their shrimp systems. We have not created a more "exotic" pack for shrimp just yet, simply because we're still actively gathering feedback from hobbyists about which ones they seem to feel work best! Feed back is essential for us to keep improving what we do, and we welcome it! One of the things I noticed about using botanicals with shrimps is that they are drawn to the botanicals rather quickly! Most of the botanicals will recruit biofilms and even some algae over time, which are obviously utilized by shrimp as a food source. I have seen the shrimp feeding actively on the softer parts of many of the botanicals as well. Many of the commercially available shrimp feeds are comprised of botanical materials, leaves, or terrestrial grains, etc., so it goes without saying that botanicals such as we're offering will typically be accepted by shrimp with little hesitation. Obviously, what works for me or another hobbyist may not work fr you, and vice versa, so everyone needs to work together and share results...that's what helps us all succeed! So, with all of those considerations in mind, the opportunity to experiment is wide open. Aquatic botanicals are not a cure all for every situation, nor a "miracle product" that will create awaeomenly successful outcomes for everyone. They are, however, fascinating, natural, and potentially very beneficial items that can yield great results when used responsibly and carefully. I look forward to feedback! Thanks! Scott Amyers22, Vpier and fishface 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DETAquarium Posted March 22, 2016 Report Share Posted March 22, 2016 Awesome Information! I have read all of the articles you have posted thus far. Please continue to do so, very interesting. Happy to have you here at the Shrimpspot and look forward to trying out a few of the seed pods. Tannin Aquatics 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tannin Aquatics Posted March 22, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 22, 2016 Awesome Information! I have read all of the articles you have posted thus far. Please continue to do so, very interesting. Happy to have you here at the Shrimpspot and look forward to trying out a few of the seed pods. Thanks very much...I am by no means an expert on anything, but I have some experience and opinions on working with these botanicals in different types of systems...and I'll be painfully honest.I think it's really important to give the facts and let consumers make their own decisions. We have a lot of customers that love these products...and I ma sure there are many more potential customers who are not sure if aquatic botanicals are right for their situations.., I'm all too happy to tell you that there are situations where these botanicals would not be a good idea...and others where they would be really cool to work with! Most important is that we all learn from each other and share our experiences- positive or negative- and grow together. I'll keep positing, and I very much appreciate the feedback from forum members! -Scott Soothing Shrimp 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.