After four years (four years!) of working at Aquarium Co-Op, I finally got to visit their
retail fish store which has been a lifelong dream of mine so did it live up to the hype I mean I've
been a super fan for many years before I ever worked for them and I wanted to see
how does Aquarium Co-Op compared to my local fish stores
First Impressions from the outside love the brand new shiny looking sign I know a lot of fish stores
I go to you know signage hasn't been replaced in decades and it looks a little Sun faded and aged
then when I went into the entrance I immediately noticed a stack of very convenient shopping
baskets which were much cleaner than the ones I've seen at grocery stores and they were sitting right
next to a very well-lit I guess wooden cabinet Cabinetry that was kind of showing beautifully
displaying all the fish food and other products in there like a lot of times you have products that
are sitting on dark shelves and then this one I don't know they kind of embedded the lighting in
it very nicely and then if you keep going left that's where the giant betta rack is where they
each have their own individual container that's getting water changes through a big sump that's on
the bottom and I liked how each of the individual containers had a black background with substrate
and some floating plants in there that look like kind of a miniature version of what a planted tank
would look like at home and they were actually in the process of changing out the black sand for
some more natural looking gravel so that it would do a better job of hiding the betta fish poop
the main section of the store is that really famous long wall of tons of fish tanks sitting
on wooden shelves all of them have sponge filters live aquarium plants a nice black background on it
so you can easily see the fish and they're kind of a more neutral color for them to shine in front of
and then on the bottom there's different kinds of bags of substrate that you could choose there was
a ton of variety I would say they mostly focus on small- to medium-sized community fish that
are also plant friendly so I saw things like you know more popular species like glowlight tetras or
green neon tetras as well as some rare species I'd like never seen in person before which was amazing
so if you want to see what my top five picks at the store were I made a video on the Aquarium
Co-Op channel over here but you know I did notice that the fish just looked really colorful very
vibrant and healthy and I was wondering well maybe it's the you know Easy Plant LEDs they're
using but Brandon the store manager said another trick they have is that they hatch live baby brine
shrimp every single day because sometimes these fish they can come in from the wholesalers and
then through transportation they're just not doing so well and the live food really kind of
triggers their hunting instincts so that they're wanting to eat more than usual and then baby brine
shrimp they've got a lot of good healthy proteins and fats in them so that's why they look so good
all the way in the back of the store is the giant aquarium that holds Murphy the
Mbu puffer it is the world's largest freshwater puffer and our store mascot at Aquarium Co-Op he
was a very massive and super chill though so I got to feed him a prawn that was soaked in
a VitaChem or vitamin supplements and that's like kind of a special treat for him so he
chomped that thing right in half and then the leftovers the Siamese algae eater, rummy-nose
tetras and other tank mates got to eat for him on one side of his tank was more racks that you
could pick different kinds of Hardscape from and then the other side would be the quarantine room
I didn't take a lot of footage of this room because it was super humid but Aquarium Co-Op
does a great job of quarantine all their fish for at least one week and they treat them with a the
Quarantine Medication Trio it's just a basically Trio of broad spectrum antibiotics anti-fungal and
anti-parasitic medications to make sure everybody goes out at least a little bit cleaner than they
came in before and what I was really impressed by was on the in that room there is a rack of retail
store process documents it's just like tons and tons of spiral manuals I guess you could call
them that the store manager made to make sure that the staff are all trained on how to keep the store
neat and tidy how to gravel vacuum aquariums how to clean sponge filters like very very detailed
with tons of pictures so I was super impressed the last area inside the retail store was kind
of behind the check stand and so the first thing that caught my notice was the frozen fish food
freezer again very well lit it had a glass door so I could clearly see what they had in stock at the
bottom they stored some baby brine shrimp eggs I thought that display was very nice looking as well
as right next to it there was a plant tanks rack where apparently they made like special
custom stands I'm not sure what to call them where there's little slots for you to put plant pots in
them so they're exactly straight in a row and it looked very clean there was no like mulm or algae
or anything and I've got an army of algae eaters in there with them to make sure that everything
looks uh peak perfection then next to that there were more tanks selling I think mostly nano fish
and then some kind of very uh unique oddball fish as well and then these gorgeous display
tanks which were amazing aquascapes and one was a very small I can't remember how many gallons
it was and then there's a much larger one and I thought it did a good job of you know when you
see something that beautiful as a customer you get very inspired to want to buy the animals or
the plants that are in that aquarium so great kind of sales display tanks. Maybe I should
have titled this video most appealing or tempting fish store because despite the small footprint I
felt like like everything was really well thought out and designed to make you just want to buy buy
because every tank used the same sponge filter background heater light all that it had a very
consistent appearance and very again well-designed aesthetic that I felt looked so professional the
store itself was designed to be very welcoming you know there's a carpeted floor instead of concrete
there was wood furniture all the products the fish the plants were very well lit and then of course
the fish themselves looked extremely healthy because of having gone through the quarantine
process and now they're feeding them live baby brine shrimp it honestly felt like I was in some
kind of high-end designer boutique fish store but everything was still pretty decently priced
thank you so much to my members for your support if you're curious what were my top five fish at
Aquarium Co-Op check out the video over here and take time to enjoy your aquariums bye!