09/03/2026
Ropefish, elephant nose, and vampire shrimp are in the house! Also, I wanted to run this by you guys before I do anything. I can already tell that this location is going to be much busier than the mall was. Not only that, but this space is bigger which means there’s obviously more ground the cover. Both of those factors mean that we will have to find ways to do things more efficiently.
One time consuming thing I’m looking at is water testing. We have always offered free water testing with our liquid kits. However, doing the testing, cleaning the test tubes, and asking all of the questions to find out exactly what we’re looking for takes lot of time. One solution to this is getting an API Aquaspin. It tests 7 different freshwater parameters and 8 different saltwater parameters all on one disk. The results are available in 2 minutes and are emailed to you so you can see what’s good and what needs some work. It also creates a profile for the customer and each of their tanks that get tested. The machine itself costs $1,350 which I don’t mind spending if it means we can better serve our customers. The issue is that each testing disk costs $3.25 for freshwater and $3.75 for saltwater. While that number might seem insignificant for a business, it adds up quick considering we do A LOT of water testing and we won’t be able to just eat that cost. So the question is, are you guys willing to either pay for the cost of the disk (no up charge) or even possibly say that a test is free with a purchase of x-amount? Or would you prefer that we continue the free liquid testing with the understanding that it could potentially be a longer wait while we’re assisting other customers?
