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Monday 10am - 7pm Tuesday 10am - 7pm Wednesday 10am - 7pm Thursday 10am - 7pm Friday 10am - 7pm Saturday 10am - 7pm

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Fish & Friends, 1155 Carlisle Street, Hanover, PA (2026)

05/24/2026

When you get 342 tanks set up and decide you want to change the fish room layout, you go and buy a pallet jack. Lonny and I spent yesterday morning moving racks around and I think we nailed down a pretty solid setup. I’ll get you guys an updated walkthrough some time this week. There’s still lots of work to do, but we’ll have the fish room going as soon as we get our permits to start the plumbing.

05/16/2026

Just a little sneak peak for you guys. We’ll definitely have some tweaking to do on some things, but we did manage to get all of the tanks from the old store to fit in the new fish room. We did have to drop down from 5’ walkways like we had at the mall to 4’ and the right hand side of the picture is more narrow yet, but it’s only a single row of tanks and you’ll see down the road why this aisle is more narrow. Still a lot of work to do, but we’re getting there.

05/14/2026

The Fish & Friends Story: Part 15 (Final Part)

The rest of our origin story goes from June-November 17th of 2025. We finally hit a period of several months of smooth sailing. I spent a few weeks really trying to learn and grasp the concept of CO2 and then we started stocking the supplies. I don’t like carrying products I’m not familiar with because I want to be able to teach customers how to use them, so this was totally new to me at the time. All of the outside tanks were good to go after I finished adding lights to them which really brought the store to life. On June 17th, we celebrated our one year anniversary of being open! It makes me sad to know that I won’t be open in time to celebrate our second year, but hopefully we can have a great grand opening to make up for it. We also expanded our merch a little bit by getting in tumbler cups and insulated tote bags. The bags could fit at least one Clover Mae at the time, but she may be a little too big for that now.

We upgraded our POS system in July which was another big milestone because it makes keeping up with finances so much easier. We also hired a bookkeeper around this time which is still to date the best investment I ever made in the business. We continued to bring in really cool fish you don’t see in shops every day like wild caught discus, altum angelfish, gold laser Cories, and more! We also brought in the hobbyist favorite 33 gallon long tanks from Seapora which are hard to get ahold of at times. Since we had all of the perimeter tanks up and running, it was time to take on another large project, putting sand in all of the tanks. I personally hate bare bottom tanks and, while they’re easier to clean, I couldn’t stand looking at them all day. So, it was time to order over 5,000lbs of sand to make it happen. I’ve gotta give it up to Steve as he did at least 90% of the tanks himself between the middle of September and middle of November. It’s very time consuming to measure it out, rinse it, and and then transport it to the tanks.

Also in September, we made another big boy purchase of our Hikari freezer which allowed us to expand our frozen food offerings. With this freezer, we were two more purchases away from starting the saltwater area. Our feeding cart got an upgrade and we continued expanding our inventory including adding Hygger to our line up. Unfortunately, during this time, our first customer and good friend, Scott Loughridge, passed away. We will have a little memorial area in the new store in his honor. As we enter November, I start ordering super heavy on the fish so they can all be quarantined and ready to go for Black Friday. We didn’t really get to do much of a Black Friday sale in 2024 because of still getting things in order, but I knew 2025 was going to be a great sale! Well, that all went down the drain when the mall was condemned on November 17th. So, we started selling fish and supplies out of the back door from then until February 28th of this year and that’s when our story gets somewhat of a pause until we get this new location opened up. Thank you to everyone who has followed along on this crazy journey so far. Hopefully this next chapter is a little less hectic haha!

05/12/2026

Probably the best birthday message I could have received this morning! I can’t wait to see it lit up at night! Thanks Kyle and the rest of the team at Strickler Signs!

05/10/2026

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mom’s out there, but especially to the other half of Fish & Friends, Tara!

05/09/2026

The Fish & Friends Story: Part 14

We’re going into April and May of 2025 and, since we’ve had Clover home for a little while, things should start going smoothly right? Nope. Right after we get into the groove of incorporating Clover into our everyday lives, Tara gets pretty sick for a few days and her eyes ended up turning yellow. So, 1:30am on a random weekday in April, we go to the hospital and they start running tests. Turns out, she needs her gallbladder removed. So, here we are again where Tara is stuck in a hospital and I’m trying to balance the store, visiting her, and home. Luckily, this time it was only for a few days and she was able to come home with a minor recovery period.

Literally the day after she goes into the hospital, I get an email from a supplier giving us a heads up on the tariff situation that was starting to arise. I felt that, as a responsible business owner, I should share this email with our customers to let them know about price increases on future orders. Next thing I know, I’m getting a call from two news outlets and Fox 43 actually came out for an interview that was televised. Boy oh boy did that upset a portion of the general public. I was called “liberal puke” by one person and another person accused me of using this as an excuse to raise my prices. Personally, I hate politics and, if you were in the store when I got interviewed, you would know that the first thing out of my mouth was that I’m not talking politics and that this is strictly about how the tariffs directly effect my business. I’m not “liberal puke” nor am I “conservative puke”. I’m just regular puke trying to sell fish to make a living. Also, despite what some people might think, I never increased my livestock prices. I ate 100% of the tariffs that came my way. That is why I didn’t order any fish out of China or Brazil for a while. The dry goods were a different story as there’s not much profit margin there to begin with, but I didn’t go overboard. If my cost went up five dollars, my prices went up five dollars and they only went up on new orders. My inventory that came in before the tariffs never went up. I couldn’t sleep at night if I knowingly took advantage of my customers like some people thought I was.

We finish out April by stocking our koi pond that was in the middle of the store, increased our pond selection, and became a Custom Aquariums dealer. I’m not sure if we’ll continue that partnership in the new location, but I can tell you that you won’t see the koi pond this year and maybe not pond products. I have big plans for that, but they’ll be executed next Spring. The rest of May consisted of finishing the plumbing on the last of the tanks, getting in two of the coolest things we carry (stingrays and mudskippers), a visit from Dean Tweeddale, a visit from some members of the Capital Cichlid Association, and training Clover on some things like placing orders. Getting those tanks plumbed in was a huge milestone I was so glad to hit because it was one of the last things we had to do before starting the plans to expand into saltwater. There were just a few things left I needed to do first.

05/07/2026

The Fish & Friends Story: Part 13

January, February, and March of 2025 were pretty much all about Clover Mae. Her original due date was March 27th, but she decided to make her appearance with an emergency c-section on January 3rd coming in at 2lb 3oz and 13” long. We had fish in the store bigger than her at the time. Obviously with her being so early, she had to spend some time in the NICU. Trying to balance the store, Tara going back to work, responsibility at home, and then finding time to get up to York to see Clover was very hard. If you ever have a baby in the NICU and you aren’t financially able to take off work to spend a ton of time up there, expect some of the nurses to treat you like absolute garbage. That was definitely the hardest part, but Tara had already been in the hospital for a month with no income from work plus she had to recover and I wasn’t able to pay myself at the time from the store, so we had to do what we had to do to keep the bills paid and keep the store open. We both also got sick for several weeks between us during this time, so that didn’t help anything.

Over this three month period, Clover and the store are both growing. Clover was slowly able to have tubes removed over the first couple of weeks and we were finally able to hold her after the last one came out aside from the feeding tube. She eventually graduated to a small bottle and was putting on some weight. Back at the store, the shelves were filling up to the point we had to start adding more. We also continued to get in some really cool fish. The time had finally come where we could start working on the outside perimeter tanks which would help us easily double our livestock capacity.

On March 9th, after 65 days in the NICU, we were able to bring Clover home. While it was great not having to try and fit driving up to York into our schedule anymore, we were faced with the new challenge of being first time parents with a still very tiny baby that made premie clothes look huge and was on a very frequent feeding schedule to continue putting weight on. She was doing great and, towards the end of March, I was actually able to bring her into the store for her first day of work. It figures she was sleeping on the job already. I’m sure a lot of our regulars remember seeing her swaddled up and sleeping on the back counter on the days I would bring her along with me.

05/04/2026

The Fish & Friends Story: Part 12

This part of the story takes place from October, 2024 through the end of the year. By now, we have a few months under our belts and the main focus is to continue growing our inventory. We started off by sponsoring and vending at our first event, the Keystone Clash. Granted, it wasn’t a smart move to close for several days to attend with us just opening, but we wanted to support our two clubs by being a platinum level sponsor and gain some exposure for the shop. We did end up taking home a few awards for our fish though. By the end of the month, we held a coloring contest for the kids at the shop and also had an article about us published in the Neighbors of Hanover magazine.

November rolls around and we got to host the Mid-Atlantic Killifish Organization meeting. It’s always a great feeling when a club chooses to come and support you, especially in a nice sized group like that. We also found out Santa was going to be posted up in the unit next to us that year, so that was super exciting as well. Things were continuing to go smoothly until the beginning of December when our lives were turned upside down.

On December 11th, 2024, we had a whole day planned. We were closing the shop for the day, going to a baby appointment where they would find out the s*x of the baby and seal the results in an envelope without us knowing, heading to build-a-bear to let the workers dress the bear in boy or girl clothes depending on the results, and then having them box the bear up until we were ready to have a gender reveal. Afterwards, we were going to go out to eat and then head back to the store to put away a fish order that was arriving in the afternoon. However, we noticed the ultrasound technician acting strange part of the way through the appointment. At the end, she asked us to wait in the lobby for the doctor to come and talk to us since it was our first appointment there. We did, and then the receptionist calls Tara over and says there’s a phone call for her. Weird, right? Well, it’s the doctor telling her she needs to go straight to York Hospital because, even though she was only 24 weeks and 5 days pregnant, she was fully dilated and the baby could literally come any second.

So, we head up to York and thankfully our long time fish friend, Tonya, happened to be one of the nurses working at that time in labor and delivery. That whole day ended up being such a blur as it seemed like we talked to fifty different people throughout the rest of the day. Reason being, they were pretty certain Clover was going to be delivered that night. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Things settled down around 9 that night, so I left to take care of the fish order that came in and grab some stuff from our house since we were informed Tara wasn’t leaving until the baby was born. I called both of our mom’s to give them the full story and I stopped by Tara’s mom’s since she was thankfully able to grab our fish order. Once I get to the store, I get a call from none other than our old friend, Scott Loughridge. He had ordered some fish on this shipment and was wanting to get them but, after learning what was going on, he hightailed it to the store at about 10-11pm at this point just to come and pray with me and to make sure I wasn’t alone. We left afterwards and I headed back up to the hospital after grabbing what Tara needed.

This is where Lonny and Steve come in. I’ve know them both through the clubs for a number of years and they offered to run the store for me when I needed. So, my daily routine moving forward was wake up at the hospital with Tara, come down to open the store and work until about five or earlier depending on the day, go home to get anything we needed, head back to the hospital for the night, and start it all over again the next day. It was exhausting, but I didn’t want to leave her alone and we never knew when the baby would come. We ended up doing our gender reveal in the hospital and found out we were having a little girl. With us still being four months away from the due date, we hadn’t solidified a name yet and were debating between Hazel Grace and Clover Mae. After Christmas, we started offering our customer favorite “mystery packs” and I also put away my first big fish order without Tara. They’re a lot less fun to do without her. Another mall staff shout out here where Ken actually drove to get our order for us so I could get an extra two hours with Tara that night. 2023 and 2024 definitely weren’t our years, so 2025 had to be better, right?

04/30/2026

Well, this is officially the end of our story in the North Hanover Mall. I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty emotional about it. I know that the new location is going to be so great and everything will be so much better for us, but this is where it all started. This is where I got the confidence to follow my dream and open the shop. This is where I met so many amazing people that I don’t even view as customers, but as friends. And just like that, it’s empty and I’m turning over the keys.

I know this mall has such a bad reputation and the locals made it the butt of their jokes, but I want to talk about my experience here. Everyone is well aware that the owner, Namdar Realty, is nothing but a bunch of horrible people that don’t care about their tenants. However, if you take them out of the equation, I have no regrets opening here. We needed a large space with cheap rent that was willing to give us a chance, and that’s what we got. We were able to learn and grow because of this place. We were able to create a name for ourselves here and, for being a “dead mall” as people liked to remind us, I feel we brought a good bit of foot traffic in. What I really want to touch on though was how great the mall staff was.

From day one, the staff here welcomed us with open arms and treated us so well. During build out, they always asked for updates and were so excited for us to open. Most of them would walk through during the day to check out the new fish and just chat when there was time. On a few occasions, we had tanks crack or even once had the pond drain from the filter outlet coming off and they were right there to help clean it up. If we had super late fish deliveries, they made sure we were able to get in so the fish didn’t have to sit in bags overnight. One of the housekeepers, Cindy, even made our open sign for us. The mall staff are also the ones that put the free library together and created a fun little place for kids in here. Namdar had nothing to do with that. I know a lot of people have shared their condolences for the businesses that had to relocate, but keep the mall staff in your thoughts as well. This place is/was their living too and I know they wanted this place to come back as much as we did.

So, with that being said, I want to personally thank Ken, Cindy, Brad, John, John (Speedy), George, Woody, Randy, Theresa, and Carol for everything they did for us and the mall. You guys are part of the Fish & Friends story, and we appreciate you all so much.

04/30/2026

The Fish & Friends Story: Part 11

Business really started picking up in August and September of 2024. The store was filling up more and more with every shipment that came in. I managed to get the last of the 40 breeders running at the beginning of August plus we moved and expanded our aquascaping section. I got tired of waiting to have lights on the tanks so I got some extension cords, took them up and over the air system, and brought them back down to the tanks. It definitely wasn’t ideal, but it was temporary and worked until our power poles finally got installed. We were only able to get lights on the middle tanks at that time, but there was no substrate and the bottoms weren’t painted, so there was enough light to somewhat light up the bottom and top tanks to see the fish better.

We started carrying tanks even though a lot of people told us not too, but we honestly do ok with them. One thing about our community that blows me away is the amount of people that are willing to spend a little bit more with us than at the box store because “I would rather support you guys.” Granted, majority of our products are right in line with big box and online retailer prices or even cheaper on some things, but tanks are one that there’s just no margin for the little guy when the retail giants can sell them for less than wholesale. Regardless, I wanted to be a one stop shop, so I stock them. During this time, we also got our 125 gallon Frontosa tank which was always a customer favorite. I do really miss that tank and it was one of the hardest things to let go of when they shut the mall down, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to properly care for them during the move.

As we continue through September, we just kept expanding our inventory. Bring in new brands, ordering heavier on the quantities, and we were really starting to make the store look full. We also got our first round of business cards in which was really exciting. The power poles were finally installed which meant we would have the outlet space to add lights to the rest of the tanks. To top off this period of time, we made the front page of the Evening Sun and York Daily Record which are two local newspapers if you’re not from the area. At the time, it seemed like things were progressing slowly but, looking back, I think we were doing pretty well with all things considered.

Fish & Friends

05/24/2026

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05/14/2026

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05/10/2026

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Monday	10am - 7pm
Tuesday	10am - 7pm
Wednesday	10am - 7pm
Thursday	10am - 7pm
Friday	10am - 7pm
Saturday	10am - 7pm