Facebook groups
Two groups, and one of them is the entire addressable community.
7,900 people is the number to plan around. It is not an aquascaping club, it is a general fishkeeping group, and people post sick guppies and tanks for sale. But its own welcome text invites aquascaping by name, so the interest is there and it has nowhere else to go.
Ակվարիումիստների Ակումբ ՀայաստանումКлуб Аквариумистов Армении
7,900members, about
- Where
- facebook.com/groups/AquariumistClubArmenia
- Language
- Armenian and Russian, mixed
- Active
- Yes, posts through 2026
- Kind
- General fishkeeping, all of it
Ask fellow keepers about your tank, share an update, or look for plants and equipment nearby.
Ակվարիումիստների ակումբThe smaller second group
555members, about
- Where
- facebook.com/groups/3740914629340576
- Language
- Armenian, with a Russian interface
- Active
- Yes, mostly buying and selling
- Kind
- Classifieds more than conversation
Almost the same name as the big group, which is a genuine source of confusion. This is the marketplace one. If you are looking for a second-hand tank or somebody's surplus shrimp, this is the more likely of the two.
Plants, aquariums, and swaps on Telegram
A Russian-speaking plant community connected to Armenia has chats for aquariums and terrariums, plus selling and swapping. You can meet other plant lovers and look out for shared cuttings or secondhand aquarium equipment.
Send us a message on Instagram if you'd like help getting an invite.
A spelling worth settling, because the group already settled it. The big group's own welcome text uses ակվասկեյպինգ, with a plain պ The source document that started this hub proposed ակվասկեյփինգ, with the aspirated փ Both are transliterations of the same English word and neither is wrong. The group's spelling is the one in the wild, used by actual Armenian aquarists writing to each other, and that is a stronger argument than a proposal on paper. This hub carries both so that either one finds the site, and it follows the community on which to lead with.
The photographs on this page were taken by other people and shared on Unsplash. Every one of them is named, with thanks, on the credits page.
Four things still unbuilt
Four jobs nobody has taken yet, and every one of them is small.
Open
A forum in Armenian.
Armenians read the big Russian language channels, which cover the general hobby well. An Armenian language thread that stays searchable, on Telegram or anywhere else, is a weekend of work, and it would hold the answers that a Facebook feed buries in a day.
Open
A club with a meeting date.
Both Facebook groups already carry the word club in their names, so the appetite is on record. What turns that into a club is four people, a table and some plant trimmings changing hands. Every club that exists anywhere started at exactly that size.
Open
A first show.
The national exhibition calendar at expo.am has room on it, and a first Armenian aquascaping show does not need a hall. Ten tanks photographed to a common rule and judged by three people is a show, and it would be the first this country has held.
Open, and checked properly
A first Armenian entry to IAPLC or AGA.
Both contests are free to enter and neither has a residence rule. The IAPLC world ranking lists every ranked entry with its country: 2,617 entries from 84 countries in 2021, with Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus and Iran all in there. The same for 2025, and the same across the AGA archives. Armenia has not appeared yet, so the first person from here to send a photograph will be news.
Shops and makers
One verified specialist. Everybody else is a Facebook page, an Instagram account or a shop with no internet at all.
Start with the named local shops and groups below. For a wider search across Armenia, open the national shop directory and confirm the current hours before traveling.
ԳազանիկGazanik. The only verified specialist
3,980Instagram followers, about
- Shop
- Արշակունյաց 54/49, Երևան
Arshakunyats 54/49, Yerevan - Phone
- +374 55 555 735
- Web
- gazanik.am, in Armenian, Russian and English
- Social
- facebook.com/gazanik.am
instagram.com/gazanik.am
It describes itself as a specialist aquaristics shop and showroom, and it earns the word. Rimless low-iron tanks from 9 to 540 liters, WRGB lighting and hanging kits, CO2, substrate, and about 39 fish species read from its own product feed. It also installs and maintains tanks commercially. Everything you can buy for a planted tank inside Armenia, you can buy here.
ԱկվամանAquaman. Real, and invisible
0web presence, of any kind
- Shop
- Surb Grigor Lusavorchi 12/10, Kentron, Yerevan
- Hours
- Every day, 11:00 to 20:00
- Web
- None. The domain does not resolve and the Internet Archive has never captured it
- Stock
- Unknown to us
A registered aquarium fish shop with no website, no social account and no archived page ever. The national business directory classifies it only as a pet shop selling aquarium fish. Whether it carries plants, CO2 or anything for aquascaping could not be established from any source we could reach. Somebody needs to walk in and look.
Կանաչ ԱկվարիումGreen Aquarium Armenia. Maker and seller
746Facebook followers, about
- Where
- Նորաշեն 11, Երևան
- Phone
- +374 55 191187
- Page
- facebook.com/greenaquariumarmenia
- Makes
- Planted-tank LED lights under the name AQUA-LUYS
Small, planted-tank focused, and the only maker in the country building lighting specifically for planted tanks. Glass CO2 diffusers around 3,500 AMD, glass tubing 1,000, check valves 200. The prices came off the page and should be treated as indicative.
ԱկվաՊրոֆAquaProf. Custom tank builder
n/rfollower count not recorded
- Page
- facebook.com/akvaprof
- Does
- Aquariums and terrariums made to any size
- Last seen
- A post dated December 2025
We confirmed the page exists and read its own one-line description of itself. We did not read its posts, its prices or its reviews, so treat this as an address rather than an assessment.
AQUA EVENTCustom tanks and installation
2018most recent post seen
- Page
- facebook.com/aquaevent
- Phone
- 077 99 98 78
- Status
- Possibly dormant
The page is still up and the phone number is still on it, but the most recent post we saw is from 2018. Eight years of silence is usually the end of a business rather than a quiet patch. Call before you travel.
@aquarium.am_Instagram micro shop
71followers, about
- Where
- instagram.com/aquarium.am_
- Address
- Արամի 47, Ghukasavan village
Note that the domain aquarium.am itself is parked and for sale, and has nothing to do with this account.
@aqua_fish_armeniaInstagram micro shop
86followers, about
Instagram verifiedAn account, a handful of followers, and nothing else we could establish. Listed because the whole market at this end of the scale looks like this.
Aquashop.amDefunct
2020last activity
- Was
- A specialist online shop for tanks, fish, plants and accessories
- Domain
- aquashop.am no longer resolves
- Page
- The Facebook page is still up
Recorded rather than hidden, because somebody will find the old page and think it is a live shop. It is not. This was the closest thing Armenia had to a specialist online aquarium retailer before Gazanik, and it stopped six years ago.
One correction
Aquavita is not an aquarium shop. It is a mineral water brand.
It comes up because the name sounds exactly right, and it is an easy mistake to make. Aquavita is a natural sparkling mineral water bottled from springs at Jermuk and sold by the Kilikia group, at 8 Tsovakal Isakov Avenue in Yerevan. Its website is about drinking water. No Armenian aquarium business trading under this name could be found. If you remember an Aquavita aquarium shop, it is most likely a memory of the water brand, or of a business that has since closed.
Reported, and not confirmed
One shop we were told about by somebody who has been in it, and could not find anywhere else.
Everything above this line was found from the outside, on the internet. This is not. It comes from the person who commissioned this hub, who lives in Yerevan.18 A first-hand account from somebody who was there is worth more than nothing and less than a verified address, and the honest thing is to say which one it is rather than quietly promote it to the list above.
Aquadesign by GazanikUnverified lead. Reported by the site owner
0web presence found
- Reported as
- A lower-end shop, where the site owner recalls seeing goldfish18
- Address
- Not known to us. None was given, and we have not invented one
- Web
- None found. aquadesign.am, aqua-design.am and aquadesignbygazanik.am all fail to resolve, and the Internet Archive holds no capture of any of them19
- Related to Gazanik?
- Not established. Gazanik's own site search for aquadesign returns Nothing Found20, so the shared word may be nothing more than a shared word. Do not read this row as a second branch of the shop above
Nobody but the person who told us has confirmed that this business exists, and no independent record of it was found. It is a name to ask about in the Facebook group, not a shop you should set out to visit. If you find it, send the address and this entry gets replaced by a real one.
Nemo Pet StoreOnline pet shop, small fish section
n/rfollower count not recorded
- Where
- nemo.am
- Carries
- A small fish section, food and accessories
- Aquascaping
- Nothing recorded
General pet supplies, including the basics that also work for a planted tank.21
Palyan LLCVeterinary wholesaler, not a hobby shop
n/rnot a retail listing
- Where
- palyan.am
- Phone
- +374 41 802020
- Listed as
- Aquariums for fish, and tanks for turtles, imported and sold
One of the five companies the national directory returns for aquarium, and the least useful of them to a hobbyist. It is here because somebody looking for an importer rather than a shop will want the name.22
list.amThe classifieds, and the real second-hand market
Not readthe listings are not readable from outside
- Where
- list.am, under Animals, then Goods for animals, then For fish and reptiles
- Has
- Sub-categories for aquariums, aquarium and terrarium plants, equipment, stands, substrates, backgrounds, decorations and care products
- Read?
- No. The listings themselves are not readable from outside the site23
Armenia's dominant classifieds site does carry this category, including a plants sub-category, which is more than most of the shops above manage. Individual items surface indirectly, among them an advertisement for professional aquarium assembly and design dated July 2026.23 So somebody in Armenia is already being paid to build these. We could not read the listings, so nothing here is a claim about price or availability.
Aqua World, StepanakertHistorical
2023before this date
- Where
- Stepanakert, not Yerevan
- Record
- A news feature published before 2023
- Now
- Almost certainly not operating
Recorded because it is the single aquarium business outside Yerevan that this research ever found, and because it slightly qualifies the flat statement further down this page that nothing outside Yerevan surfaced at all. It is not a place you can go.24
The Sunday market
There is a market on Chekhov Street on a Sunday morning, and it is worth an early start.
In Armenian a շուկա, shuka, is just a market. This is the animal one, and it is where a good deal of Armenian fishkeeping actually happens: not in a shop with a website, but at a stall, on one morning a week. Everything in the shops and makers list was found from the outside, on the internet, and none of it found this, because there is nothing online to find. The account below is the site owner's, first hand, given on 9 September 202618. It is an unpublished source, which is a real kind of evidence and a different one from the rest of this page, so every claim that rests on it alone is marked.
How precise that pin is, stated plainly. We could not pin the market itself, so we pinned the street and then the only thing on it that any public map calls a market. OpenStreetMap carries a single node tagged as a marketplace beside Chekhov Street, named only Շուկա, which is the Armenian word for market, and last surveyed on 27 May 202317. It sits about 54 meters from the nearest point of the street17, and Chekhov Street runs for about 2.6 km16, so if the Sunday stalls set up on a different stretch this pin is out by as much as a kilometre. Nothing in the map data says that market trades in animals. That part comes from the site owner and from nowhere else.
Many different fish, and the hardware to go with them: accessories, tanks, food, filters18. That is a wider range than any single one of the Instagram micro shops above, and it is available on a morning when most of the country is not at work.
Not much that is exclusive18. Breadth without depth. If you want a specific species, a named substrate, a WRGB unit or a CO2 regulator, this is not where that lives, and the specialist shop is.
Every Sunday, in the first half of the day18. No closing time was given to us and we are not going to guess one. Treat the morning as the whole of it and go early.
No street number, no opening or closing hour, no stallholder's name, no price for anything, and no confirmation from any published source that the market trades in animals at all. Nobody on this team has stood in it. We have not invented an address to fill the gap.
A market of stalls has no company registration, so it is not in the national business directory, and it has no website, so it is not in a search result. This is the systematic blind spot in everything above: the research method used for this page can only see businesses that publish. The same directory has no aquarium category at all22.
Nothing on this page is a recommendation, and that goes double for a market with no trading name and no address. Ask what the fish is, check the temperature it needs against your room, and read the find-a-fish tool before you leave rather than after you get home.
Where can I buy
One shop for the equipment, and a Facebook group for everything else.
This is the honest shape of buying anything for a planted tank in Armenia today. It is a short list because the market is small, not because we stopped looking.
Equipment, tanks, CO2, lighting
Gazanik. Arshakunyats 54/49, Yerevan. +374 55 555 735. gazanik.am. The only place in the country where you can buy a complete planted tank in one visit.
Fish, if you are near Kentron
Aquaman. Surb Grigor Lusavorchi 12/10, Yerevan. No phone number we can verify and no website. Open daily 11:00 to 20:00 according to the national directory.
Fish, on a Sunday morning
The շուկա on Chekhov Street. Shengavit, Yerevan. Every Sunday, the first half of the day18. No trading name, no phone number and no address beyond the street. Reported by the site owner and not confirmed by any published source, so read the section above before you go.
Everything else, and it is most things
The Facebook groups. Private sales are where the Armenian trade actually happens. Second-hand tanks, surplus shrimp, plant trimmings, a heater somebody is replacing. Ask in the big group, and look in the smaller marketplace group.
Lighting and CO2 glassware, made here
Green Aquarium Armenia. Norashen 11, Yerevan. +374 55 191187. Glass diffusers, tubing, check valves, and custom planted-tank LEDs under the AQUA-LUYS name.
Before you buy the fish, check it fits. The find-a-fish tool takes your liters, your base length and your water and tells you which species fit and which do not, with the reason attached. It also carries the warnings for the species you will be offered in a shop and should not buy. And it will tell you the thing nobody selling you a fish will: not one of the standard unheated-tank species is stocked anywhere in this country.
- Ակվարիումիստների Ակումբ Հայաստանում / Клуб Аквариумистов Армении. About 7,900 members, Armenian and Russian, active through 2026. Public group metadata only. facebook.com/groups/AquariumistClubArmenia
- Ակվարիումիստների ակումբ. About 555 members, mostly buying and selling. Public group metadata only. facebook.com/groups/3740914629340576
- Գազանիկ / Gazanik. Address, phone, slogan and self-description from the shop's own contact and about pages. Catalogue size read from the shop's own published catalogue rather than from somebody's description of it. gazanik.am/contact-us, gazanik.am/about
- Gazanik on Instagram and Facebook. About 3,980 followers and about 517 posts, posting through September 2026. instagram.com/gazanik.am, facebook.com/gazanik.am
- Spyur business directory, Aquaman Aquarium Fish Shop. Address, hours and classification. Record last updated 23 February 2026. spyur.am
- Internet Archive. Confirming zero captures of aquaman.am, ever. web.archive.org
- Կանաչ Ակվարիում / Green Aquarium Armenia. Address, phone, product prices and the AQUA-LUYS lighting name, from the page itself. Active February 2026. facebook.com/greenaquariumarmenia
- ԱկվաՊրոֆ / AquaProf. Page and self-description confirmed. Post dated December 2025. Contents not read. facebook.com/akvaprof
- AQUA EVENT. Page and phone number confirmed. Most recent post seen is 2018, so possibly dormant. facebook.com/aquaevent
- Instagram micro shops. instagram.com/aquarium.am_ at about 71 followers, and instagram.com/aqua_fish_armenia at about 86.
- Aquashop.am. Defunct. Last activity 2020 and the domain no longer resolves. Facebook page still up. facebook.com/100063616133735
- Aquavita. A natural sparkling mineral water bottled at Jermuk, sold by the Kilikia group, 8 Tsovakal Isakov Avenue, Yerevan. Site read directly. aquavita.am
- IAPLC world ranking tables, 2021 and 2025. 2,617 ranked entries from 84 countries in 2021, and zero occurrences of Armenia in either year. iaplc.com/e/result
- AGA Aquascaping Contest archives. Zero results for Armenia. agaiac.org/2025/results, showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org
- Armenian aquarium community survey. Shops, groups, events, and their current public contact details.
- OpenStreetMap and Nominatim, Չեխովի փողոց / Chekhov Street, Yerevan. Geocoded and read as geometry on 9 September 2026. Eleven ways carry the name, all of them in the Shengavit district, together running about 2.6 km from roughly 40.1489 N, 44.4714 E to 40.1580 N, 44.4870 E. Length measured from the street geometry itself, not quoted from anywhere. nominatim.openstreetmap.org, OpenStreetMap geometry. Data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0
- OpenStreetMap node 1536176486, the marketplace on Chekhov Street. Tagged
amenity=marketplace, named only Շուկա and Рынок, at 40.153542 N, 44.481984 E. Version 7, last edited 27 May 2023 by the mapper arcturusss, carrying a survey date of the same day. Nominatim reverse geocodes it to Chekhov Street, Shengavit, Yerevan 0039. It is the only marketplace anywhere along the street in the map data, and the distance of 54 metres to the nearest street point was computed from the coordinates here. The map data does not say what this market trades in. openstreetmap.org/node/1536176486. Read 9 September 2026 - The site owner, first-hand account, 9 September 2026. Not a published source. The existence of the animal and fish market on Chekhov Street, what is sold there, the observation that little of it is exclusive, the Sunday morning opening, and the report of a shop called Aquadesign by Gazanik all come from one person who lives in Yerevan and has been to both. Nothing in this account has been confirmed by a second source, and it is recorded as testimony rather than dressed up as research. Corrections from anyone who also goes are welcome
- Domain and archive checks on the Aquadesign name, 9 September 2026. DNS A-record lookups for aquadesign.am, aqua-design.am and aquadesignbygazanik.am all returned nothing. The Internet Archive holds no capture of aquadesign.am or aquadesignbygazanik.am, ever. Instagram gives the same answer for handles that plainly do not exist, so it was treated as no evidence either way. web.archive.org CDX
- Gazanik's own site search for aquadesign. The shop's WordPress search returns the heading Search Results for: aquadesign and the text Nothing Found. This is the shop's own database answering, which is why it is quoted rather than a search engine. It does not prove the two businesses are unrelated, only that Gazanik does not use the word. gazanik.am/?s=aquadesign. Read 9 September 2026
- Nemo Pet Store. Online pet shop with a small fish section, food and accessories. Site verified 8 September 2026. nemo.am
- Spyur business directory, catalogue search for aquarium. Returns five companies, which between them are the entire formal registered aquarium sector of the country. Palyan LLC, a veterinary wholesaler at +374 41 802020, is listed as importing and selling aquariums for fish and tanks for turtles. The directory has no aquarium category of its own, and Gazanik, the best aquarium shop in the country, is not in it at all. spyur.am catalogue search, palyan.am. Accessed 8 September 2026
- list.am, the Armenian classifieds site. Category tree confirmed as Animals, then Goods for animals, then For fish and reptiles, with sub-categories for aquariums, aquarium and terrarium plants, equipment, stands, substrates, backgrounds, decorations and care products. The listings themselves were not read. Individual items surface indirectly, among them list.am/item/23972151, an advertisement for professional aquarium assembly and design dated July 2026, and list.am/item/22142269 for custom tank building. list.am
- Local aquarium market guide. Source of the Aqua World record in Stepanakert, which rests on a JAMnews feature published before 2023 and is carried here as history rather than as a working address. Also the underlying table for the Nemo and Palyan entries above
Continue
Where to go next.
The shops directory
The full directory behind the shops named here, with the three map databases reconciled and the joins visible.
The club
The proposal that follows from this page: what a club would be for, and why a contest is not the first thing.
The Armenian scene
The scene this community sits in: one specialist shop, no distributor, and the law on wild animals.
Trade and geography
What actually enters the country, in dollars and kilograms, and from where.
What it would take to start
What it would take to turn six thousand people in a Facebook group into something that meets.