Elos Aquastudio

[Hawkeye]

Stopped in today, unfortunately did not have my camera with me.

Start with the nitpiks:
Pet peeve of mine though is water on the floor - and there was a bit of that. Plus the guy filling the tank at the front of the store didn't tie down the hose properly and it fell on the floor dropping probably two gallons before my wife picked it up and told someone.

Similar to another LFS near my work, they do not list prices on all the tanks. I'm not a fan of this and not sure if it's just because inventory is changing so quickly or i wasn't looking in the right place. I really dislike asking people how much. That's just me...maybe other folks don't care.

On with the cool stuff:
There's a lot of variety here. Multiple species of clownfish - yes perculas in midnight form, platinum form etc., also a dazzling selection of tangs, angels and all in amazingly healthy condition. The back tank had some amazing chalices (which these days are the in thing I guess) and a really big long tank with adult cross hatches/v-tail grouper etc., My daughter enjoyed the plush leather stools in the back to sit and watch. My daughter can usually name most fish in an LFS (hahhahah) but today she was stumped by the variety here. Saw two huge peacock mantis shrimp, a huge eel that looked tight in his container, and really really tiny shrimp/goby pairs. The list goes on...

What caught my eye was several of these ponies that I was tempted to pick one up. (used my smart phone, sorry about the quality).


Without a price listed, and an attendant who said "they arrived yesterday from brazil", and the fact that he couldn't give me the species name...i decided to pass. They look like ingens, but possible they were reidis. Also not known is whether they were captive bred or not...i'm sure they were but again i didn't feel like pestering the guy with questions, especially to someone who doesn't even know what species they are.

If you label the tank with the species name and price, I probably would have gotten at least one. Maybe it's a ploy for me to drive myself back...hahahah.

Oh well...next time!

 

[jaa1456]

I have been there several times and every time the floor was covered in water. I haven't been for awhile but I remember the floor looked like it was starting to warp.

 

[AquastudioNYC]

Hey Phil, thanks for the feedback! We are aware of the many comments on the pricing issues. All of the fish and invertebrates have prices which are on cards on the wall in between each system, you just may not have seen them. We are working on an iPad app that will eventually replace these and be tied into the POS system. As for the coral pricing we are working on re doing all the coral tanks and having them all divided up by sections with flat rate prices for each coral in that section. It's seems to be the best way to make everybody happy without writing on the tanks, which just is not an option.

As for the water on the floor, well it is a fish store and we have close to 5000 gallons of system water to mange and keep in check and this is an exhausting amount of work as you can imagine. As always this is a work in progress and we are working on getting as many maintenance jobs on the systems as automated as we can. I have been working on that for the last few weeks.

Thanks again and btw the seahorses are $75 each and I am not exactly sure of the breed but I will shoot you a pm with that info tomorrow since I am down in Miami at the moment.

Darren


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Hawkeye]

Thanks for the info darren. New stores will always have growing pains. If it were easy - everyone would be in the business flourishing.

by the way - I know you mean point of sale...but that acronym has a few different meanings...HAHAHAHAHA.

 

[greg 45]

If you had the time to write this post why didn't you ask the questions when you were at the store . Ralph and the employee's always go out of there way to help new and advanced customers . This is just my observation , every time that I have been to store.

 

[Hawkeye]

Ralph and the employee's always go out of there way to help new and advanced customers . This is just my observation , every time that I have been to store.

Thanks for your insight.

If you had the time to write this post why didn't you ask the questions when you were at the store .

uh...i did ask the question -what species is it. Without knowing the species, what purpose would i have to ask if they are captive bred, or if the cost is $500 or $1? Do you mix maroon clownfish with percula clownfish? Don't answer those rhetorical questions. You should never mix sea horses species since they all carry varying strains of vibrio, which if introduced to a different species with no immunity results in death. Therefore if the seller is unable to provide you a positive identification of the species, you are playing russian roulette by considering purchasing one. Asking further questions just strains my credibility and also wastes their time since I have no intention of buying without knowing what species.