Recent trip to Japan Part 1: Visiting Aqua Gift in Osaka prefecture

Recently my family and I traveled to Japan to see our parents, but at the same time I had opportunities to visit two aquarium shops in Japan. One of them is Aqua Gift in Osaka prefecture and other one is Ceppo in Aichi prefecture. Today, I report Aqua Gift, then Ceppo is on another day.

I visited Aqua Gift first in Osaka prefecture. It looks like they have their own shipper, Son’s Aquarium Fish Trading, in Philippine, so they have a tons of fish stocks from Philippine. You might remember that they have Mitratus x Burgess like hybrid butterflyfish. The fish is also from Philippine.

Aqua Gift shop is like warehouse type shop you can see in the U.S. You cannot tell that the shop is there from the outside. Also, they are located in the residential area. There are many stock tanks for fish and corals. I feel like they are more like the U.S. style, but not like standard Japanese aquarium shop.

I had an opportunity to talk to an owner of Gift Shop. He explained to me the current situation of aquarium industry. Aqua Gift is mainly focusing on the online shopping, so not many people visit their actual shop. During my visit, people working at Aqua Gift were preparing the shipment for the online orders.

There are a tons of Chaetodon ornatissimus and Chaetodon meyeri which I never had a chance to see in person in the U.S.

They also have many stocks of yellow belly regal angelfish. The price of this fish in Japan is much cheaper than in the U.S., so Japanese reefers are so lucky to have them in their tank.

The video above is showing a tons of Pseudanthias ventralis in the quarantine tank. They are very active and looks very healthy to me. I am not aware of any aquarium shops in the U.S. stock that many Ventralis anthias.

Aqua Gift also sells many corals as well. The picture above is for Acropora coral. They are nicely sitting on the egg crate and illuminated with T5 light and spot LED light. The LED spot light is very popular in Japan to give corals some specific light wave length like UV. LeDio from VolxJapan and Vital Wave from Blue Harbor are very popular LED sport light in Japan.