Jacked Reefer
Valuable Member
Howdy Everyone! Just a warning, this thread is gonna be messy so please bear with me! There will be a lot of learning (failure), a lot of sweat, and boring posts that nobody wants to read for my own documentation.
Introduction
I have been working at Local Fish Stores for the past four years. While I have loved cleaning aquariums, helping customers, catching fish, testing buttloads of water, and all the other things people find miserable about working aquarium retail. There is one thing I dislike about it. Management. The first fish store I worked at was great! The owner respected the employee's ideas, allowed personal employee display tanks in the stores, all around a great guy! He just ran the financial side of the business very loosely, which always bothered me.
The current LFS I work at is a combined pet store. Pretty much any pet you could imagine (besides exotics) we have it. The only issue with that is that the owners don't really care for fish. No new systems are ever set up, the fish systems are from the 90s, and any updates or refreshes of the department that are needed never happen. The current fish department manager tries to do his best with what he has. And It just is difficult with the current owners.
That's where my idea comes into play. What if I started my own aquarium shop? I definitely have the knowledge, seeing as I have been keeping fish for 6 years, and keeping retail systems for 4, am currently going to school for marine biology, as well as briefly having my own freshwater breeding operation that paid for my hobby. I have wholesale relationships as I did quite a bit of ordering for my previous shop. The only thing I was missing was either the money to open a shop or the space and time to have a coral grow out.
I believed this until I saw a Facebook post for a new small store that opened up about 45 minutes away from me. When I arrived, The store was a single person running a horse through and ordering coral from wholesalers in her garage!
That experience spurred me into thought! I could run a similar thing out of my garage, yet provide a better selection, a bigger knowledge base, and a vision of corals that DON'T have a premium name price hike.
The Plan.
The day after visiting I devised a plan for how I was going to operate this shindig. I have been selling off tanks and equipment that I have no use for to build up a little bit of cash surplus and on Monday I managed to score 3 x 50-gallon Zoomed Lowboys for a pretty good deal. And the plan started coming together
To begin the operation will have 3 systems.
System 1 - Combined Retail System
2 x 50-gallon Lowboys (48x24x10) tied into a 40-breeder sump. One tank will be lit by a 4 bulb t5, the other by LED (probably an SB reefs 300w light to begin)
System 2 - Receiving / QT
1 x 50-gallon Lowboy tied into a 20-gallon long sump. Lit by 2 bulb t5 and an LED strip light (undecided). Not planning on keeping corals too long in this system so optimal coverage and light is not the most important factor right now.
System 3 - Display/Growout
75-gallon on a 20-long sump. This system was designed to be saltwater initially, but due to time and cost concerns, it was relegated to freshwater duty. The fish and decorations will be out by this weekend, saltwater will be in it next week hopefully! Will be lit by 4 bulbs t5 fixture.
To do
As of now, I have gotten a lot done in one week. Acquired the tanks, Built one of the stands, called the zoning department and got the business OK'ed, made a deal with a friend for most of the equipment I need, and most importantly got the Fiance to sign off on everything.
But there is still a lot to do. I want at least the 75 to be cycling when I travel back home to see my parents and fiance next Friday. So that means putting in a lot of work this next week tearing it down and redoing it in my garage on top of midterms.
For the 50-gallon tanks, I still need to build the other stand, paint the stands and bottom glass of the tanks, drill the tanks, and plumb everything. I haven't decided what I'm going to do about the sumps. I probably will just baffle off the return sections. But I have been thinking about emailing Tenecor for some baffle kits and overflows.
Once everything is cycling then I will begin the process of establishing my LLC. I already have social media accounts and domains left over from my freshwater business, So I will probably end up going with the name I have on those (It is a really good aquarium business name TBH). After that, I want to get some orders in, get a nice Camera (still debating between DLSR and mirrorless), And throw a launch party/frag swap for the reefers in my area!!! That is still at least a month/two months down the road though, so we will have to see.
Stick around to see some cool stuff happen! Will definitely be posting progress and coral pics where there are some to take! Happy reefing everybody!
Introduction
I have been working at Local Fish Stores for the past four years. While I have loved cleaning aquariums, helping customers, catching fish, testing buttloads of water, and all the other things people find miserable about working aquarium retail. There is one thing I dislike about it. Management. The first fish store I worked at was great! The owner respected the employee's ideas, allowed personal employee display tanks in the stores, all around a great guy! He just ran the financial side of the business very loosely, which always bothered me.
The current LFS I work at is a combined pet store. Pretty much any pet you could imagine (besides exotics) we have it. The only issue with that is that the owners don't really care for fish. No new systems are ever set up, the fish systems are from the 90s, and any updates or refreshes of the department that are needed never happen. The current fish department manager tries to do his best with what he has. And It just is difficult with the current owners.
That's where my idea comes into play. What if I started my own aquarium shop? I definitely have the knowledge, seeing as I have been keeping fish for 6 years, and keeping retail systems for 4, am currently going to school for marine biology, as well as briefly having my own freshwater breeding operation that paid for my hobby. I have wholesale relationships as I did quite a bit of ordering for my previous shop. The only thing I was missing was either the money to open a shop or the space and time to have a coral grow out.
I believed this until I saw a Facebook post for a new small store that opened up about 45 minutes away from me. When I arrived, The store was a single person running a horse through and ordering coral from wholesalers in her garage!
That experience spurred me into thought! I could run a similar thing out of my garage, yet provide a better selection, a bigger knowledge base, and a vision of corals that DON'T have a premium name price hike.
The Plan.
The day after visiting I devised a plan for how I was going to operate this shindig. I have been selling off tanks and equipment that I have no use for to build up a little bit of cash surplus and on Monday I managed to score 3 x 50-gallon Zoomed Lowboys for a pretty good deal. And the plan started coming together
To begin the operation will have 3 systems.
System 1 - Combined Retail System
2 x 50-gallon Lowboys (48x24x10) tied into a 40-breeder sump. One tank will be lit by a 4 bulb t5, the other by LED (probably an SB reefs 300w light to begin)
System 2 - Receiving / QT
1 x 50-gallon Lowboy tied into a 20-gallon long sump. Lit by 2 bulb t5 and an LED strip light (undecided). Not planning on keeping corals too long in this system so optimal coverage and light is not the most important factor right now.
System 3 - Display/Growout
75-gallon on a 20-long sump. This system was designed to be saltwater initially, but due to time and cost concerns, it was relegated to freshwater duty. The fish and decorations will be out by this weekend, saltwater will be in it next week hopefully! Will be lit by 4 bulbs t5 fixture.
To do
As of now, I have gotten a lot done in one week. Acquired the tanks, Built one of the stands, called the zoning department and got the business OK'ed, made a deal with a friend for most of the equipment I need, and most importantly got the Fiance to sign off on everything.
But there is still a lot to do. I want at least the 75 to be cycling when I travel back home to see my parents and fiance next Friday. So that means putting in a lot of work this next week tearing it down and redoing it in my garage on top of midterms.
For the 50-gallon tanks, I still need to build the other stand, paint the stands and bottom glass of the tanks, drill the tanks, and plumb everything. I haven't decided what I'm going to do about the sumps. I probably will just baffle off the return sections. But I have been thinking about emailing Tenecor for some baffle kits and overflows.
Once everything is cycling then I will begin the process of establishing my LLC. I already have social media accounts and domains left over from my freshwater business, So I will probably end up going with the name I have on those (It is a really good aquarium business name TBH). After that, I want to get some orders in, get a nice Camera (still debating between DLSR and mirrorless), And throw a launch party/frag swap for the reefers in my area!!! That is still at least a month/two months down the road though, so we will have to see.
Stick around to see some cool stuff happen! Will definitely be posting progress and coral pics where there are some to take! Happy reefing everybody!
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