Reef Metabolics

Ross was so fascinated by the Indo-Pacific surgeonfish after keeping a tank at home, he decided to set up a business calling it BLUETANG after graduating from the University of Gloucestershire in 2007.  Ross works with the aquatic trade distributing aquatic products alongside working with local schools and companies offering many services from Gigabit Internet to IT Consultancy that all help fuel his passion for the sea and coral conservation.  This has lead the business to be comprised of both Marine and Media based services.   Any service from bluetang will ultimately help towards his acropora project in the aim for a more sustainable aquatic industry.

The Blue Tang is still a big part of his life. “He’s 19 now and enormous,” said Ross. “He’s had to have several new tanks as he grew, in order to accommodate him properly.”  The fish is very distinctive with a royal blue circular body which is flat like a pancake, a pointed snout-like nose and a yellow tail. Dory in the film ‘Finding Nemo’ is a regal blue tang.

When Ross started selling coral alongside his IT Services from his first premises in Quedgeley, Gloucester in 2014, he imported it from various places in Australia, mostly sourced from the Great Barrier Reef.  Corals are live marine invertebrates which are popular with saltwater fishkeeping hobbyists.  But after a while Ross became concerned that the coral he was buying was being taken from the wild.  He also stated that in recent years the Great Barrier Reef has suffered mass bleaching events, so every effort needs to be taken to help the reef recover.

“It wasn’t very Eco-friendly,” he said. “I was unhappy that I was depleting natural resources. So I did some research and decided to propagate the coral right here in the UK” steering his aquatic side of the business away from importing from the wild.  Now Ross runs large acropora-dominated tanks in a new larger premises based on the edge of the River Severn to propagate Acropora Coral in the UK with the aim of supplying the trade with fully sustainable UK grown tank hardened coral, grown on a range of products Ross developed called Reef Metabolics.

As his business relationship with his aquatic suppliers expands, Blue Life USA, were looking for a UK Distributor for their own product range.  So, in 2018 Ross took the opportunity to distribute this brand too.

Ross’s passion for technology still is running strong, with all the BLUETANG hosting services run on state of the art self hosted servers setup by Ross in Gloucester.  Powered by Solar, and multi Gigabit internet connections!  BLUETANG is proud to support local Schools for over 15 years with all aspects of IT hardware, network and Internet infrastructure so they can deliver the curriculum more effectively.  Please read our news for the latest projects.

While the business is going from strength to strength, and both sides of the business are helping Ross to provide a sustainable future that is not depleting the ecosystem, the Blue Tang fish that started it all is also doing well – and looks as if he will continue to inspire Ross for a good few years to come.