Midland Reefs is an aquatic wholesaler specialising in reef and marine aquarium supplies. The company distinguishes itself by being run on a knowledge base rather than just being a “box shifter”.
Founded in December 2001 by marine aquarium writer and author Tim Hayes, Midland Reefs prides itself on supplying products that, although sometimes appearing expensive, offer genuine advantages over competing products.
All Midland Reefs products are backed up by an in-depth understanding of their application and operation in the marine aquarium.
Tim Hayes writes extensively for aquatic magazines on marine subjects, specialising in reef aquaria. He has been a regular contributor to Practical Fishkeeping (PFK), where the monthly column "Reef Ramblings" originated, writing articles on all aspects of reef keeping, and tackling readers’ questions on reef aquaria in depth.
Tim is the author of more than 100 articles which have been published in aquarium magazines throughout Europe and the USA, including Coral magazine (USA), Koralle (Germany), Reef (France), Reef Art (Italy), Today's Fishkeeper (UK), Tropical Fish (UK), Aquarium Fish (US), Freshwater And Marine Aquarium (USA), The Conscientious Aquarist Online (US based online magazine), and the trade magazines Aquatic Trader, Pet Business World News, Pet Gazette, and Pet Product Marketing (UK).
Other published works are a stand-alone supplement for Today’s Fishkeeper, entitled “First Time Reefkeeper”. This was essentially a “light” version of the Reef Aquarium book currently being written by Tim.
500 Ways to be a Better Marine Fishkeeper, a collaborative work (four writers) on which Tim was primary author and technical consultant, writing over half the book.
This has also been translated into German as “500 Tipps und Tricks zur Meerwasser-aquaristik”
For 2011, Tim has written and compiled a reef aquarium training course for retailers based on the 'Best Practices' of SAIA, and has presented this course for SAI Global. The course booklet is an invaluable document for retailers, comprising 60 pages (around 28,000 words) covering most aspects of the retail trade in reef organisms.
In December 2001 Tim Hayes started his company Midland Reefs, the first commercial coral farm in the UK. Over time, with increased involvement in writing for the aquatic press and consulting for manufacturers, the emphasis has gradually moved on to product testing and research, although captive propagated corals are still being grown. During the last seven years Midland Reefs has had a series of successes with breeding marine animals including: Peppermint Shrimps, Ocellaris Clownfishes, Maroon Clownfish, Gold Chromis, Banggai Cardinalfish, a number of coral species, numerous snail species, and a species of nudibranch. On the coral side the emphasis has moved onto researching the sexual reproduction of corals with success being achieved with both stony and soft coral species.
Tim Hayes offers his services as a reef aquarium consultant and has worked with Sparsholt College, the UK’s centre for vocational fisheries studies, on a reef exhibit for the Blue Planet Aquarium, one of the UK’s largest public aquariums, with a major livestock wholesale business, and as a consultant to Bangor university. Other public aquarium projects include work with Deep Sea World in Scotland and consultation with Blue Reef (Newquay).
Midland Reefs helps sponsor the yearly UK public aquarium conference where over the past three years Tim has delivered a presentation on the captive breeding of Berghia species nudibranchs, a presentation looking at the dangers posed by Vibrio species bacteria (particularly in relation to Seahorses being fed live food), and on LEDs as the future of display lighting.
Tim has been actively involved with the UK public aquarium campaign “The Big Fish Campaign” aimed at educating hobbyists about the problem of purchasing fishes that outgrow hobby sized tanks.
In 2008 Midland Reefs, along with Tim Hayes, worked to promote awareness of IYOR 2008 to the aquarium hobby and industry. This was backed up with a series of articles in PFK written by Tim, where the emphasis was on The Responsible Reefkeeper, looking at the various ways the hobby and the reefs interact with each other.
Along with Christiane Schmidt, Tim is co-founder and board member of the Sustainable Aquarium Industry Association (SAIA) see www.saia-online.eu for more.
Tim is a member of the newly formed Pet Education Trust’s Advisory Panel as its aquatic expert. For more information, see: www.peteducationtrust.com.
Midland Reefs has built up a customer base amongst UK hobbyists and the public aquarium community by providing some of the highest quality nutrition available: Cyclop Eeze Freezerbar, DT’s Phytoplankton and Oyster eggs, PE Mysis, and other phytoplankton and zooplankton products. Customers include some of the most prestigous UK public aquariums, such as the London Aquarium, the Deep, the National Marine Aquarium, and the Horniman Museum.
Midland Reefs is the UK distributor of a number of specialist marine books and exclusive items of equipment for the reef aquarist from the USA. Authors represented include: - Anthony Calfo, Robert Fenner, James Fatheree, April Kirkendoll, and Steve Tyree.
A growing range of Midland Reefs products, under the Reef Scientific brand, is backed up with a number of quality/niche products from the US and Germany, plus Midland Reefs is the UK distributor for SICCE products from Italy.
Tim is well known on the USA marine conference circuit, regularly attending IMAC and MACNA and is in contact with the many of the leading authorities of the US marine aquarium hobby. Tim gave a very well received presentation at IMAC 2008 and as result expects to go back to the States to do a short tour of aquarium clubs in the near future.
He also attends most major European marine conferences, increasingly often as a speaker. In December 2005, along with Scott Michael, he was a speaker at the first marine conference held in the Czech Republic. In 2007, along with Julian Sprung, he was a speaker at the first marine conference to be held in Croatia. In 2009 Tim was a speaker at the prestigous French event, Récif France. In 2010 he was a speaker at the 1 st EXOTICA Meerwasser Symposium, in Vienna, Austria.
Tim Hayes
Midland Reefs
©2010 - 2011
