About Reefphyto - Live Marine Nutrition from Wales, Est. 2008.

Reef keeping is one of the most technically demanding hobbies in the world. You already know that. You have spent real money on equipment, real time on water chemistry, and real care on the animals in your tank. And if you have ever watched a fish you love decline despite doing everything right, you will know the particular frustration of a problem you cannot identify.

Most of the time, it is not the water. It is the food.

Why Reefphyto Exists

Reefphyto was founded in Wales in 2008 by Darren, a marine aquaculturist who had watched the UK reef-keeping community struggle with the same nutritional gap for years. The science was clear: marine fish and corals evolved to eat live zooplankton. Copepods, phytoplankton, rotifers, the complex planktonic community of a real reef. Dried flakes and frozen cubes are a compromise that the hobby had simply accepted, not because they were adequate, but because there was no practical alternative available at the hobbyist level in the UK.

Darren had the facility. He had the expertise. He had spent years culturing live marine foods at professional scale. And he was tired of watching dedicated reef keepers fail at nutrition when the solution was straightforward.

Reefphyto was built to close that gap.

What We Do and How We Do It

Everything Reefphyto produces is cultured live at our specialist freshwater-to-marine conversion facility in Wales. Copepods, phytoplankton, rotifers, zooplankton blends, all maintained under controlled aquaculture conditions, all dispatched fresh on the day of preparation, all shipped with viability as the primary concern.

We do not source from third parties. We do not hold stock. Every order is prepared from active, living cultures that Darren and the team maintain continuously. What arrives at your door is the same product we use in our own professional aquaculture programmes, not a diluted, aged, or processed derivative of it.

That matters because live food is only as good as its cell density, activity, and nutritional content at the point it reaches your tank. A copepod that has been in transit for five days is not the same as one dispatched that morning. A phytoplankton product stored for months before shipping is not the same as one cultured and dispatched fresh. We have built every part of how we operate around delivering the first version of each of those things, not the second.

Darren - The Expertise Behind Every Order

Darren has been culturing live marine foods professionally since 2008. Before Reefphyto, he spent years in marine aquaculture developing the techniques and infrastructure that now underpin every product in the range. He is not a retailer who discovered a product to sell. He is a practitioner who built a business around a problem he had already spent years solving.

That expertise is part of what you receive when you order from Reefphyto. Darren monitors every question that comes through the site and answers personally where he can. If you are not sure which product is right for your tank, or you are having trouble getting results and want a second opinion, he is genuinely available. Not a support ticket. Not a chatbot. Darren.

Reef keeping is a hobby built on shared knowledge, and that has always been how Reefphyto operates.

Who We Supply

Reefphyto supplies reef keepers, marine fish breeders, and public aquariums across the UK. From first-time mandarin dragonet keepers establishing a refugium copepod population, to professional aquariums running continuous zooplankton programmes, the range is designed to serve the full spectrum of serious marine husbandry.

The hobbyist and the professional have the same fundamental need: live food that is genuinely alive, genuinely nutritious, and genuinely reliable. Reefphyto exists to provide exactly that, at every scale.

Our Commitment to Every Order

Every culture we dispatch is prepared to the same standard regardless of order size. A 100ml Reef Shot pouch receives the same care as a 5,000ml phytoplankton order. Live-on-arrival is not a marketing claim here. If something is not right when your order arrives, we make it right. That is a straightforward commitment and one we have maintained since 2008.

We are not the cheapest option in the market. Live food cultured properly, dispatched fresh, and shipped with viability in mind costs more than a bottle of preserved or diluted product. We believe the difference in what your tank receives is worth that. If you try Reefphyto and disagree, tell us.