It all began with a love for fish.
I found my niche in the freshwater ‘nano’ species and planted tanks with an adoration of aquascaping- but no real aquascaping skills. It wasn't right away that I found aquascaping, I didn't even really know about aquatic plants for the first few years I kept fish. not until after going through phases of keeping and learning about many different types of fish did I really learn to appreciate nano fish and all the tiny life that exists within a nano tank setup (nano meaning the species kept inside are of a nano variety, not that the tank is necessarily small).
Like many others heavily invested in a fishroom, I created a business out of my hobby, at first making jarrariums, ‘self contained aquatic ecosystems’ but my passion to educate people and grow the business grew, selling these jarrariums was just the kindling to a much larger fire.
Over the first couple years in business I began to see the major downfalls within the industry. I had a large pivot in my original idea to start a storefront and rather instead have chosen to focus more on breeding in house fish, invertebrates, growing plants and on education.
Being a business owner, importing animals can be highly stressful work- everything must be done as fast, but as safely as possible and some death is always inevitable. Disease also regularly slips by the often rushed quarantine periods that individual stores set. There is unfortunately no mandatory or standard amount of time a retail establishment is required to hold new arrivals for. That leads to disease being passed along to their customers tanks.
I have dealt with many of these problems first as an aquarium owner and secondly a business woman. These frustrations can diminish the joy we get out of keeping fish very quickly, making us feel like we are failing. I’m here to tell you, it’s the industry failing the customers and the animals and not you. I think tackling these problems requires more than just creating a mandatory minimum quarantine period.
So my focus in business are breeding programs, education and hopefully over time we can hold the industry here in Canada to a higher standard. I work on maintaining the healthiest captive populations of aquarium fish, all imported animals are held for a minimum 8 weeks before entering breeding program for second or third generation public sale and only few fish are direct sale after 8 week quarantine *few exceptions*
All the plants are transitioned if purchased but vast majority are grown in house and fully aquatic so they should not experience any melting unless extreme environment change (it's good to acclimate plants too)
I have goals to help develop educational programs that will inform people about how easy natural aquarium keeping can be. Achieving balance in an aquarium, how to be successful with plants, fish, neocaridina shrimp and aquatic snails. I'm sure there are nearly endless topics to cover. Check back regularly, as always-
it's a work in progress <3