Adventures with Corndog: Corndog's Fish Store

Still alive, just busy building an empire Waiting for a plane to fly home. When I get back, time to ship stuff out to online customers, and continue construction on the expansion. Electrician has been working while I was out of town.

Chaotic_sl said:

Corndog, maybe you could offer me some advice.

I'm moving into a new home, as of now I have a 90, 75, and 29 gallon tanks. New home is double the size, and I'm planning on either picking up a 150 and 125 and keeping the 90, or Doing a 150 and keeping 90 and 75.. either way.

I want to do a freshwater sump setup, maybe using the old 75 as the sump for the 150 etc

My question is, 1) Where do you recommend getting the larger non standard size tanks from? I want glass. All I really know is glasscages.com, but they dont ship to anywhere near me and i've heard so so reliability on them.

2) I know it's a debated topic, but how would you recommend piping the sump on ,say, a double overflow tank?

3) Tank stands. Who makes a sturdy non iron wont get raped in the butt stand for the oversized tanks?

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1. I'd source your nearest Local mom and pop shop. And ask for quotes. Then PM here and I can make sure they're not taking advantage of you. In terms of best bang for buck. Probably just an Aqueon 125 gallon is it. Price really goes up after that. Infact I'll just list my every day prices on them here so you can compare.

125g = $458.90
150g = $781.30
180g = 945.10

Reason that 125g is a sweet spot is because it essentially uses the same thickness of glass as a 75 gallon. The 150g and 180g use the thickness of glass of a 90 gallon. Both the 125 and 150 are 72x18. The 180 is 72x24.

Stand Options
Black Pine Stand from Aqueon = 393.90
Cinder Blocks with cloth covering = 75
Guy from Craigslist = $300
DIY 2x4 with paint = $100

2. Sump piping. I recommend a herbie drain. Basically it's a drain line with a gate valve in it. You can dial it in so it runs 100% silent. And runs as a siphon. Letting you push MUCH more water through say a 1 inch line. Then you have another drain place slightly higher as a backup in case something was to ever impede your main drain line. In my experience almost anything will work. But only Herbie style is actually 100% silent. Durso etc. You can still hear water moving.

3. See above for stand prices.

Here are some pics of the steel stand for the latest tank built for the shop. Also a shot of the puffer who gets to live in it. And a one last one for anyone who is into rarer large fish. Albino Arowana growing out

Chaotic_sl said:

Thanks, I didn't know aqueon made stand sizes that were above 90+ I guess they must be special order.

I have aqueon tanks now, I think I want to do something nicer though. I'm really not terribly happy with the quality, I mean they function reliably.. but the glass distorts visibly (I imagine that's across all tanks) and the silicone seems excessive.

Frenzied, I like those cad lights tanks.. but the website seems terribly bugged. I'm looking for something exactly like that. If i'm going to pay $800 for a run of the mill 150 gallon, I might as well pay $1400 for something extremely nice. Maybe i'll try dropping an email or something.

Any other recommendations for high end tanks corndog?

I think I might just have someone come and setup a sump on the tanks since i've never done it before.

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For something large I only go acrylic as the failure rate is nearly 0. I work with Clear Fabricators Inc for all large tanks. If you're looking for the best that is who I would work with. He ships tanks out all around the country and every aspect of his tanks are custom.

I read too much into the "get raped in the butt for iron stand" comment as to mean doing a tank build on a budget. For instance my custom steel stand with adjustable and removable legs was $1200. As far as build quality goes I haven't found anyone that can match CFI in build quality.

I'm working with someone right now to design their dream 180 gallon. Tank will be around $1800.

When deciding on the tank, first examine how it's going to enter your house. I've seen too many people overlook that step and end up having to remove a window to get the into the room.

Been going well. Just been full busy lately. Had an incredibly long summer here which hurt sales. Gonna miss my 300k in sales goal by about 20k it looks like because of it. I seriously don't remember a summer ever as nice.

Vanderhoof_sl said:

I did some backtracing on the interwebs and I think I watched some of your videos. At least I hope they're yours because I thought they were great! Keep it up!!

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Yeah shouldn't be too hard to track me down really Thanks for the compliment.

BrutulTM_sl said:

I like the idea of the display tanks in the other space or maybe dedicate that side to something like saltwater, african cichlids, etc. Maybe you could put a couple of couches over there and let the local fish club meet in there or something. There might not actually be a fish club but you could start one. Then again maybe having a bunch of fish nerds hanging around your store isn't what you want even if they do spend money but I think it could help you build loyalty with the more hardcore aquarium people. My favorite fish store in the Bay Area was just a warehouse with the tanks all set up on giant home depot style shelving. He was mostly into African Cichlids and there was this filthy couch out in front and there were always dudes hanging out on it wearing shirts with fish on them. He was hooked in with the people who raise/trade cichlids around the bay area. I guess my point is that his store was impossible to find and looked like absolute shit in comparison to every other fish store I have ever been in but he did pretty good business by cultivating the community and having stuff that no place else had. In a way I bet it's nice to not have to deal with people bringing in their kids to gawk at the fish and selling 10 gallon tanks to Moms who are going to put 25 cent feeder goldfish in them and then kill the fish and come back pissed off because their kids are crying.

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I've discussed this with some people, and done lots of research. Adding another theme to my store, will open up my cutomer base to new people. I could bring in African Cichlid people or saltwater people etc. I'm fearful, that expanding into other arenas will make us like every other store. I never want to hear "Uh, go talk to that guy, he's our saltwater guy" etc. Also from managnig a previous store that did africans, community, south americans and saltwater. Every new person you can add 20 minutes to the encounter because even though fish are in sections, they still want a saltwater blue damsel, neon tetras, nemo, and an oscar to live in the same tank.

Then on the supply side. All the good vendors specialize also. So the best africans come from african only wholesalers, same with saltwater etc. This means more trips to the airport and more freight charges etc. There also another big factor, by expanding and picking a side, anyone not on that new side is offended.

As for the couch idea. I do already have a seating area at the front of my store that is two nice chairs and a little table with a couple coffee table books about nature aquariums on it. Works out nicely. I too had thought about making the ultimate room next door. I was thinking it could be used to host fish meetings, rent out to businesses for meetings etc. The problem is, fish people can talk your balls off. People hanging out doesn't mean they're spending money. Also I think it would make my space problem. If I've got 5 people sitting down in the lounge area, you still need to check in on them to make sure they're doing ok etc.

As for the fish club, we have a huge one here with 100+ people in attendance regularly. It's so strong I was thinking of holding my own mini events next door.

Kaige_sl said:

I'm no businessman, but you should probably risk the hit and get rid of that latino chick. She might cost you people, if she hasn'talready. If new people or casual customers see you flustered with her, they might avoid you in the future because they don't know that history. Your regulars might get annoyed because you're dealing withherand not taking care ofthem.

I'm not sure how things work on Yelp, but can't you dispute it? Also, can you respond to feedback?

We can help too, even if it looks weird that we're posting from some odd location, there's bound to be dudes from the board that can neg her review and post their own. I'm sure guys from the store's area are here too that can back you up. You've provided us with a thread to read, the least we can do is lend you a hand with that.

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You can reply to a yelp rating, but it doesn't change the rating and people are fickle. There is no down voting on yelp, you could praise the review. But in reality someone can post that I grind up puppy mill dogs and turn them into fish food and feed them to the fish, and it'll be there for everyone to see forever. Unless I can prove that it was a competitor that posted it and have a lawyer serve yelp with a letter and go to court to contest it.

The best way to fight a bad yelp review is to get more good ones to push it further down the list. However good reviews are hard to get to "stick" as you have to have an active yelp account and be posting for months-years for good reviews to stick. They have an algorithm basically that a bad review almost always shows, and good reviews get filtered heavily to stop fake accounts etc. If you advertise with them, the algorithm changes the other way around, more good reviews will show than bad.

I have like 40 legit reviews. 38 5 star, and 2 1 star. 18 total reviews show to the public. 16 5 star, and the 2 1 star reviews. Here are the examples of bad reviews:

"Nice place. Healthy fish. Beautiful plants. RUDE salesperson. He acted like I had completely interrupted his morning. He was BEYOND unkind and unhelpful. I was flabbergasted at his behavior. Will NEVER go back." This was my employee who is a manager. I watched the video of the incident to confirm. Lady storms out of the store after we keep telling her the truth about which fish aren't going to live in her 5 gallon unheated aquarium. This is a case of can't make everyone happy. If we sell that customer the wrong thing to that 5 gallon aquarium, our other customers in the store would be disappointed.

I offered them a $100 gift card to the store, to try another chance at the store, but they're not interested. The reality is that there is a huge section of pet people who are very sensitive. They are so involved with pets because they have a hard time dealing with people.

Another big problem is people think they know best. An example from yesterday.

A customer walks in and says I hear you don't have a live fish guarantee. I reply and say that is correct, but whats up? Something not going right? She says well I bought 4 guppies from you last week and all have died all the other fish I bought at other stores are still alive. I then ask, oh what other fish? 3 Feeder goldfish, A pea Puffer, some other Guppies, and some Platies. I explain that basically goldfish shouldn't be mixed with the others, especially feeders as they carry a lot of disease. The pea puffer could get nippy on the guppies etc. That the guppies and platies need hard water which we don't have from our tap. Then I find out the tank was setup the day she bought all the fish. She has no way to test the water at all and I encouraged her to return with a water sample so we could test. Knowing that what killed these fish is most likely an uncycled tank.

After all of that, I refund the money for the fish even though it's clearly not our fault and the tank is gonna lose everything if she doesn't start taking charge of the thing. But the logic of people is, only your fish died! It can't possibly be my setup. Or even better, I've done it before so it'll work! Never mind that the last goldfish she had lived for almost a year before it died instead of 30+ years like it should have. And didn't reach a foot long in a year like it should have.

Most people realize you shouldn't keep a dog in a closet for it's whole life as that'd be cruel. Not so with fish tanks. And not only that, they want to keep a Dog, Cat, hamster and a snake all in the same closet. It's the same as fish you can't just mix them all. But they all live in the water mentality is that is stuck for a lot of people.