Aquarium Oddities NEW STORE in the works :)

[Sea.Sea.Sea.]

Here is an update for those of you that aren't fans yet of our facebook page
We have officially "sealed the deal" on the new location as I signed the lease today!  Hope to be moving in there very soon and once we get in there I'll be sure to let the "fish out of the bag" on the location   Here is a hint, it will be on the WORLD FAMOUS Woodruff Rd.    (but easily accessible from various other roads, ha ha)

Once we get setup in our brand-new store, we'll be getting weekly shipments once again and of course as always, we'll continue our protocol of "screened for perfection, quarantined, and disease free specimens to our customers"  that we started here in the Upstate over 5 yrs ago   Why change a good thing that works right? lol...  And as far a fish prices go, well, let's just say that with our new suppliers that we have recently contracted with, we will WITHOUT A DOUBT have the cheapest prices in the Upstate, PERIOD, when it comes to saltwater fishies     

The new AO store will be one of those, "What would I do differently the second go-around" kinda stores (but on a working man's budget of course, lol)  It will be a store that we will be able to grow into for many years to come

The really cool thing about this spot, is we'll have just as much space in the back of the store (behind the scenes) as we'll have in the front.  This will be very nice for holding our freshly imported livestock, out of sight, until they are ready for sale   And as frags go, let's just say this store will be part fish store and part aquaculture facility   Once we get everything up and going, which may take a while lol, we'll be able to boast more frags to choose from than any other store in the Upstate...um...combined:) 

We'll also be offering a few surprise goodies for FREE every time you choose to visit us:)  More details about that once the new store opens and you visit 

This is it reefoholics!  This is the store we've been working toward for many years!  And it's finally manifesting into reality

Till next time...

chuck@aquarium oddities

[fsn77]

This sounds great, Chuck!  The new place sounds like it'll give you a lot more flexibility to do many more of the things you'd like to do.

[Sea.Sea.Sea.]

Definitely Frank...  Our new spot is better than the old in many ways;)

Hey Explosive, how are the neon-orange acans doing that you got from us?  I had seriously thought about hanging on to those, lol, but one less thing to worry about when moving everything I guess...  I'd definitely like to buy back a frag of those one day from ya
One of my Greenville friends that is setting up a 600g visited Fishy Business the other day and he could stop talking about what a nice collection of acans they had, and at really good prices...  I haven't been there in forever and was thinking about stopping by on next trip Monica and I make to Columbia. 

[Sea.Sea.Sea.]

Well, it's official...  We have now moved the entire store!  Yep, even did it through the rain, sleet, and snow all day Saturday, lol, WHILE WE WERE OPEN, ha ha!  Ironically it was the best Saturday, in terms of sales, that we've had in probably a year, lol...  We were trying to carry stuff out the door and people were literally snatching things up, right out of our hands lol!  Now the real fun begins as I get to setup everything  A super big THANK YOU to Johnny and Earl (locod) for slaving away on there weekend off just to help me.  I guess with Johnny working on his 600g aquarium (1000g system) setup  and Earl on his 400g system, I'll be supplying frags, colonies, fish, labor and equipment free of charge for quite some time, lol.  

Also, after spending several nights working in the new store, I gotta say it ROCKS!  Especially the location, as everything is CONVENIENT.  There are about 8 good restaurants to eat at all within walking distance, Lowes is within walking distance, and the parking lot, as big as it is (about 5 times the size of our old parking lot), gets and stays PACKED!  You can see us from I-385 and ofcourse if you're shopping in The Shops of Greenridge at BestBuy, Petsmart (for your dog or cat supplies ofcourse), or one of the other 50 or so stores you'll probably see us as well;D  With this kind of exposure we'll be able to bring in even more oddities, including the extremely rare oddities you normally only see in books and the web, at unbeatable prices!!!  Even with the windows blacked out we have people stopping us, wanting to come inside as we carry our big tanks in, lol!  I guess we'll no longer be just a "destination lfs" as we'll be a convenient lfs for all your low to high-end desires
After we got everything in, I can see that the new "retail area" spot is a little wider but shorter in length than our old spot.  But we have a pretty killer sump room, holding area, propagation room, a big play room for my little man Charlie, 3 (yes 3) XL bathrooms (i.e. water rooms lol), and a few more rooms for storage  On the utilities side of things, we have a gas line for my future auto/standby generator (a must for any serious reef shop), A HUGE dumpster, a MASSIVE AC unit (i.e. my chiller), oh yeah and last but definitely not least, FREE WATER  A FISH STORE'S DREAM!!!  On top of all this, I can be at the airport or my house in about 5 minutes FLAT, meaning less travel time for my multiple weekly shipments  Feels really good to be setting up in a new location, almost like setting up that dream reef tank kinda feeling!  I'm sure everyone is gonna love the warm, cozy feeling, that this new store projects as much as I do;)  Well, I better go and do some "work" as I still need to play around with my "Japanese reef tank inspired" LED Spotlights that we are using over our truly custom, one-of-a-kind, quarantine systems  

Till next time, hope you guys have a pleasant and positive day!

chuck@aquariumoddities

[fsn77]

Chuck... All of that and no posting of the street address for your new location?    Please, help out all of us that rely on Google Maps or a GPS to find our way!!!

[Sea.Sea.Sea.]

Will do Frank, as soon as we get everything set back up, and are able to open   Probably will take about a month... Hopefully

[skey]

Congrats Chuck and Monica,

If you send a mutual customer this way I may be able to send you a nice little store warming goody (of course once your tanks are up and going)

It sure is fun to move a fish store (been there done with that! until next time of course)!

Wish you and Monica great success. I think this Salty hobby of ours is really starting to grow in the upstate of SC, and am very happy about it. Hopefully you can do great things in such a high traffic location, surrounded by the suburban Jungle (or suburban reef in the underwater sense)!

Also great to hear about the AC unit, I know this is of great concern. We kinda fell into a location where the AC was greatly oversized for the 1500 square we have and we used every bit of it last summer. $500 power bills are no fun, but the happy fish and coral are worth it IMO.

Cool idea on the QT setup, very unique, looking forward to seeing your design. I am still stuck with my lowly 20g long  , but maybe one day...

The more reefers the better!

Cheers,

Scott

[Sea.Sea.Sea.]

Thanks Scott and thanks for the nice gesture:) We definitely will send you some once we are open.  I like your idea of getting into holding and quarantining livestock, as we need more stores in the Upstate to do that (as I've been preaching for years, lol).  If you do that I'll be glad to refer people all the time to you   Since we haven't ordered fish in so long, I've had customers asking where we would recommend them to go and I've had a really hard time sending them other places, unless they are willing to drive 2-4 hours, and feel comfortable about it.  You should really visit my friend Bruce at the beach and see his awesome little shop.  I have to credit him for making me a firm believer in quarantining and pre-medicating for customers, and of course your bottom line.  We both still recommend to our customers to hold them in a separate system for a while before adding to their display (although most don't and still rarely have any problems) and the benefits for the store owner are tremendous in terms of fish lives saved and quality control...  Also, an absolute must IMO if you're planning on getting into maintenance on a large scale...  Still can be frustrating at times though when you work so hard to provide healthy fish, only to have a customer buy a fish, on impulse when you're closed, from say...um, "Vetco" (name scrambled to protect the "innocent" ) and they wipe out there once healthy long-term established tank:( 
Yeah, ironically, Bruce had asked me a long time ago about going partners, but unfortunately, I had already closed on a house up here back in 2003:(  If I knew then what I know now I would have sold the house and taken his offer because IMO it's really hard to run everything the way you'd like, with employees, grow a store, trust that they don't mess something up on a service account and still get some sleep lol...  Oh well, here we are, and Bruce if you read this, as I'm sure you will, thank you for putting up with me when I worked with you, and thanks for your patience with me and teaching me "some" of what you know, and answering my endless questions, sometimes till 11pm, two hours after you had already closed     All future generations owe you in regards to the pioneering ground work you helped to provide, that paved the way to the great addiction that we have come to know today as the "reef hobby"! 
I can certainly sympathize with the $500+ power bills....  But yeah, it's a must to keep the fish and coral happy, especially the corals .  We constantly had problems with our old spot as it was a no-name undersized POS "new system" that froze up this past summer and we walked into a store that was in the high 80's!  Needless to say, we lost a lot of our sps, and the ones that survived never really looked as good after that...  I didn't realize that your spot was 1500 square feet...  That is close to what we have here...  If you remember way back when, when we were talking about maybe doing a second small store in Clemson, our first location that we looked at happens to be where you are now, lol!!!  Like they say, "great minds think alike" lol...  Then we looked into doing a wholesale biz as a second venture, but that has been put on the back burner after further research, and of course the economic situation played a part, lol...  So, we decided to keep to just one store and focus on that.  Still plan on finishing the basement idea for propagation, after the new store is up and going, of course (only so much time in a day, and only so much $ in the wallet lol)...  As for the qt section, basically relying on the ambient light from these fixtures and surrounding coral lights, as the little cubes are a PITA to clean and the LED bulbs will help with the power bill of course, not to mention it will look really cool at night  

But anyway, now that my neighbors have closed up I guess it's time to get off of here and do some "real" work that I choose not to do during their biz hours.  As I don't want to be the "new guy" pissing everybody off with all the sawing, drilling, hammering, and loud expletives from time to time when I hurt myself or mess something up and have to redo it, lol... 

Also, maybe one day in the future, when we're old and gray (or maybe sooner), we'll be able to do what you and I talked about, briefly I might add, and possibly "strengthen" what we all have in the Upstate   I still wished we would have talked more and looked into that a little further:(  Not too many people doing that in this biz it seems like...

Till next time, have a pleasant and positive day!

chuck@aquariumoddities