Hi all!
New here so I thought I'd say hey! I'm a long time lurker of the you-tube channel. Think I've been watching for about seven years now. I've learned a lot from the videos and comments, so thought I'd maybe take it a step further and start paying a little more attention around the forums - and I recently became a YouTube Member, so I'm looking forward to that additional content as well.
The aquarium hobby has always been interesting for me - ever since my family inherited a 220 gallon Oscar tank when I was just a young boy. Once we moved on from that tank, my involvement in the hobby was next to nothing. I still found myself interested and checking out cool tanks and ideas online, but never got another tank of my own until about 6 years ago... when you might say things started to get a little out of hand.
I've always been a passionate animal person, not just aquariums - but most of the pet hobby. I live in a relatively small area, and was keeping reptiles for several years. After becoming known for sourcing quality feeders at good prices in that hobby, our communities only pet store suddenly shut down. I, and everyone else in my community, suddenly had nowhere to shop for even the most basic of supplies. It's a long story, but I quickly went from selling just the odd feeder for reptiles to more supplies and food for all pets. It started in my basement, that evolved to my garage, that evolved to a small little shop that I had intended to just open on the weekends to help people out in similar positions as myself - I still had a full time job. Well, that idea quickly turned into hiring a like minded friend to run the shop for me a few days a week... then 5 days a week... then multiple employees and 7 days a week. At this point, I was just along for the ride and the journey was writing it's self. Five years ago we moved from that first 1,200 square foot store to 4,000 square feet. Four years ago I left my full time job to focus entirely on the business. Three years ago it became 6,000 square feet... two years ago it became 8,000 square feet.
Today we compete with a big box chain store and a couple of other small local shops that have since opened. Forever evolving and adapting, learning new things every day to try and keep setting our store apart from the others.
All of that to say, that I went from very little real knowledge and just a general interest in the hobby just 6 years ago, to today running a full range store who's aquarium department is one of our bigger attractions. With nearly 3,000 gallons of display tanks and another 500+ gallons of quarantine tanks. It's been an incredible journey and I've found the YouTube channel alone to be a very valuable resource - I'm looking forward to poking around here a little to see what more I can learn!
We started with a single 55 gallon tank with hang on back filters and 5 gallon bucket water changes in our old, small store. We just sold guppies. Today our main display system runs automatic water changes, temperature matched and de-chlorinated automatically. (Shout out to the tip on the HAAS manufacturing temperature controller used in your fish room, Cory. It was a much needed upgrade over our old thermostatic valve that was... inaccurate at best).
I'm carefully watching and patiently waiting for the day the store partner program enters Canada. I've actually inquired a few times already about some of the Aquarium Co-Op brands, the sponge filter and easy green in particular... they're just a better product than anything we have available here and I can't wait to get my hands on them!
Sorry for the giant wall of text, I assume most of you have tuned out already... I got a little carried away.
TL;DR: Hey, I'm new here!
EDIT: Well I'm off to a great start. Immediately after posting this I found the introductions section. Perhaps a moderator could move my post over there. Apologies for the mistake!
