hi guys I'm Irene with Girl Talks Fish and today I'm in the city of Fort Collins, Colorado — the
fourth biggest city in the state home to Colorado State University, as well as the northernmost fish
store in Colorado at least that I visited and the reason why I picked this place to be the
first ever fish store tour I've done is because it's so clean and so professional like combine
the polish of a major pet store chain with the uh with the charm and uniqueness of a local fish
store and this is what we got. Welcome to The Fish Crew! [laughs] I'm keeping it I'm gonna use it
so this is The Fish Crew we're one of the northernmost officials in the state we've
been open for about 10 years we are a small business and we do have our 2200 gallon tank
here in the middle that has our shark and a large eel in there and then we do something
kind of unusual from other stores is like our Aquaspin water testing which is a little bit
more accurate than a lot of the other ways now I hear the store has an interesting background like
how did you guys get started so the owners and two of our managers work together at a previous
pet store and they dreamed up in aquatic oasis on the back of some napkins and um oh we opened up in
2013 going on 10 years that's so cool so the first thing you see when you come into the store is like
immediately on the left side this giant amazing planted tank both of these are 225 gallon tanks
they've been running for years it's one of those things where our general manager is here so much
that he doesn't have any fish tanks at home so these are kind of his babies yeah and so we all
take care of them and we trim this guy once a week he's got this big old 20 pound um CO2 cylinder
the only thing I have to ask is why the random orange things yeah um
what are they for? are they, like ammonia
absorbing like I have no idea what these are. our general manager got a 3D printer and made
some uh Thanksgiving decorations got a wishbone and a turkey tell me a little bit about the salt
water tank you've got a turkey yes we have a turkey if you look in all of our displays
there's little things in them right now um I don't know much about corals are these
um soft corals yeah so we do have some softies in here we also do have like an Acro SPS Coral
up here in the corner some bird's nests you saltwater people you know what that meant yeah
um and then we do have some of our big tangs, a Bellus Angel um sweet okay [Music]
let's check out the rest of the store cool
Okay so after the big display tanks in the front you draw people in and then we've got this amazing
checkout area like wow the plants and then when you kind of leave the checkout area we've got a
ton of Tanks over here so we keep everything from like a one gallon all the way up to 150. okay
um and if you don't see something that you want we can order stuff in for you all right
I love this first section show me your shrimp so um these are our shrimp racks what is the
most popular color shrimp oh blue blue yeah wait where are they blues and reds you got
the blue velvets down here kids really like blue shrimp really yeah and then of course
the fire reds cherries you know the red stripes but do blues even show up in planted tanks that well?
not as well as red or orange Right? That's why I'm like so surprised that Blue's like way up there yeah it's
just kids really love blue shrimp and then you also have some dwarf crayfish here the blue bolts
are my favorite I was gonna say if I was gonna get a blue shrimp I would get the blue bolt ones versus
the darker blue one because like I said they don't show I mean they're very pretty but they just
don't seem to show up as well no I don't think so um we do get like the blue I think they're
blue dreams that are a lighter blue okay but this is so cool because it's like that ombre effect
Blue to White right I think those guys are so cool next tank I definitely have to get that
so now we get to the good part my favorite part the fresh water fish these tanks look
so clean and perfect are they custom made yeah so these systems are custom made and shipped into US
whenever we got the store uh up and running so clean it's amazing how do you choose what fish
to get in like what are some of the top sellers so a lot of it is going off of demand and what people
are kind of wanting and what's selling better than others and then trying to keep up with you know
the aquarium trends what's popular what people are becoming attracted to and what they might be more
attracted to in the future and that kind of thing um yeah I see you have a little bit of everything
you've got the livebearers Guppies we've got rainbowfish here I love this whole section like just for
African cichlids and then you've got the decor to kind of match it to like the real Rock work
and everything like that that's really really neat how does the plumbing kind of work do you
is it each rack is kind of its own system they all share the same water yeah so each system
does have one plumbing system okay um but since there can be you know disease in one tank but
not in another all of the water has gone through a bunch of filtration and then we do have a UV
sterilizer on all of them and we do try super hard not to cross-contaminate for sure and then how do
you do the water changes it is it from the back like are there big sumps that you work with or
um we actually just take a really big like one of those 32 gallon buckets and some siphons
and then we pull water out of each individual front yeah okay and then we take a gravel vac
um and just pull water from each tank and we'll go back in and
fill it up you're saying there's no shortcut to cleanliness not really it just helps when you
pay a bunch of people to do it for you and then we have tetras rasboras danios barbs everything
down here okay and goldfish and everything in that last system over there there's a method
to the madness and then this is the like escaping table this is your aquascaping area yeah I love this
oh and you have like the inches and everything like that this is so cool you got the rules as
well so you just don't have your children dig in here right tell me about the plants and what kind
of fertilizers do you guys like to use in store um so we use a lot of seachem and aqua vitro I'm on
this side you know it's a lot of flourish, flourish Excel we dose iron the potassium advance so the
tissue cultures don't have to be kept in a fridge because some stores I go to they have those in
a fridge of some sort but no they don't have to be they just need to you know be kept at a
reasonable temperature they're like busting out of this thing look at this right they're like
let me out so we do have the uh ReptiFauna over here now which are just those bioactive plants
these are so cool you get many people coming in here wanting to make paladarians and terrariums
there are a pretty good amount of people um carrying these is somewhat new for us yeah I
don't remember this last time I came right and you guys actually sell floating plants oh there's a crab
yeah we have a bunch of fiddler crabs in there they're kind of everywhere just making babies
salt water is harder than fresh water just because it is more things that you need to pay attention
to especially in Colorado since the evaporation rate is so high okay um I definitely encourage
like Auto top offs and things like that just to make sure that salinity is staying in range you
know you do want to be mindful and you do want to be careful but it really isn't that hard
this is the monstrosity in the middle of the store how many gallons is this thing so it is 2,700 gallons total 2200 in
the display 500 gallons underneath how big is that thing is that a hermit crab
what is that oh yeah he's a giant hermit. that's like the size of a softball. he's a unit yeah that's awesome and then I think I
saw a Shark down there what is that he's a bamboo shark okay tell me more about some of the fish in
here I also saw a giant moray eel yeah what is his name um that's our leopard eel her name is Tessa
um she doesn't eat the other inhabitants? she is not very nice to her friends sometimes but for
the most part she behaves herself so we just covered the whole store what percentage of
the business would you say is fresh water versus salt water and then you guys also have an aquarium
service business as well yeah so our store is pretty 50/50 freshwater saltwater we do try
to help out everyone along their fish keeping Journey from the beginning to
um you know the more advanced customers um but our service started about eight- eight years ago
we've had a couple different service techs right now Sherry is our service manager and Tanner is
our service technician but we do service about three days a week and send them out and mostly
cleaning tanks or I saw some of the services you offer was also like actually setting up the
aquarium into aquascapes and stuff like that too yeah we do uh tank moves tank installs tank setups
that whole thing as well yeah okay you've worked at the store for a bit what is some key advice
you would give to like a beginner who's coming into a store for the first time and you're like
I really want them to be successful before they go home the last thing I'm going to tell them is
right um I try to um definitely go over the nitrogen cycle so that people have an idea
of what's actually keeping their ecosystem running definitely I do try to encourage
people to do research before they come in um that way they have an idea of kind of what they want
um and then if they have specific questions then you know we can try and help them that
way but even if they don't that's totally okay too well thank you so much for spending your
morning with me for everybody who wants to learn about the fish crew where can they find you online
um we are at fishcrew.com and then we do have a TikTok and Instagram um and a Facebook so
you can find us um there as well very cool and sometimes you guys go to shows as well right
I saw you guys yeah I just went to Aquashella so yeah even if you're not in Colorado you may
see them at a future convention near you yes and we are planning and participating in Reef Stock
again okay so very cool yeah awesome thank you so much absolutely thank you [Applause] [Music]