Check Your Points, Catch the Light Show, Meet the New Arrivals
The full story behind this week's newsletter: you can now check your rewards points at the customer kiosk, our Halloween Light Show lights up the shop every 20 minutes all October, the NYOS and ATI reef lines have landed, and a huge wave of new fish is moving through quarantine.
Welcome back to your weekly stop at Squeaky's Aquatics. October is here, and the shop is dressed for it. You can now check your rewards points at our customer kiosk. Our brand new Halloween Light Show lights up the whole shop every 20 minutes, all month long. Two whole new reef lines, NYOS and ATI, just landed on the shelves. And our quarantine room just took in a huge wave of new fish, while a long list of others finished their stay and moved out to the showroom floor. Here is everything.
The Halloween Light Show Is On
Every 20 minutes, every day we are open, all October long.
On the hour, at :20 and at :40, the whole shop lights up. The aisle lights, the LED strips and the spotlights sweep across the store in waves of Halloween color, rolling from one end of the shop to the other, and the big finale rolls all the way to the front door. Listen for a little heads-up a few minutes before each show, so you know one is coming.
Every show is a little different, so if you hang around for a while, you may catch a new one each time.
Each show runs a few minutes. It is free, there are no tickets, and it runs every day we are open through October 31. Come catch one, or stay for two.
Save the date: we are also planning a Halloween Trick or Treat on Saturday, October 31. Details are coming soon, so keep an eye on next week's digest.
Check Your Points at the Kiosk
The first piece of our rewards upgrade is here.
We promised an easier way to see your points, and here it is. Next time you are in, you can check your balance yourself at the customer kiosk, no need to wait for the counter.
Tap Rewards
Look for the Rewards card on the kiosk.
Tap See my points
That opens your points lookup.
Type your phone number or email
Whichever one is on your account with us, and your points come right up, along with what they can get you.
You earn points on every purchase, in store and online, and your current points carry over. Nothing is lost. More of the rewards upgrade, with more rewards to choose from, is still on the way.
And while you are at the kiosk, say hi to Pip. All October, Pip is trying on a new Halloween costume every 15 minutes: a witch, a pumpkin, a vampire and a pirate. See how many you can catch.
Just Swam In
A tank that pours its own sand, two new reef lines, and fresh plants.
This one stops people in the aisle. It is a 9.5 gallon rimless tank with resin rock, and a small pump quietly carries sand up through the rock and lets it pour back down in a steady stream, like a waterfall made of sand, over and over. It comes in two rock styles (A2 and C1). In-store pickup only.
A pink-and-green stem plant with veined leaves that stands out in any planted tank. It came in with a fresh batch: Java Fern Windelov, Sparkle Sword, Uruguay Sword, Golden Nesaea and Jungle Val, plus UNS Controsoil to plant them in.
Handmade sinking wafers for plecos, otos, loaches and everything else that spends its day rasping at surfaces. The recipe reads like a grazer's real diet: alfalfa, kelp, moringa, spirulina and real oak wood.
Two German reef lines just landed, and we brought in the whole of both. From NYOS: the REEFER test kits with their clear, precise color changes, GOLDPODS liquid plankton made from real Arctic copepods, coral and organic fish foods, ION-B dosing, VIPER return pumps, Reef Cement and NYOS PURE salt. From ATI: mail-in ICP lab water tests from $34.95 that show exactly what is in your water, single ICP Elements to correct exactly what is off, the Essentials dosing line, Absolute Ocean, and the ultra-slim Straton X reef LED. See all nearly 70 products we brought in.
Marked Down This Week
The online headliners. And a heads up: plenty more deals are in-store only.
The 40 breeder is the tank a lot of us would pick if we could only have one: wide, shallow and easy to light, aquascape and reach into. It works just as well for a planted community tank, a reef, or a turtle. The 10, 15 and 20 long sizes are marked down too. Glass tanks are in-store pickup only.
Stop guessing at your light. A PAR meter tells you exactly how much usable light reaches each spot in the tank, so you can place corals where they will thrive instead of bleaching or browning out. The Standard model is on sale too, at $225.49.
Painted in bold blue, yellow and black brushstrokes, with more personality than most fish twice its size. It is a predator and not reef safe, so it belongs in a fish-only tank with tankmates that can hold their own. In-store pickup only.
Fresh Out of Quarantine
These finished their stay in our quarantine room and moved out to the showroom floor.
It looks like someone dipped a velvet black fish in molten gold: a deep blue-black body that ignites into a glowing yellow-orange tail. Halloween colors, all year round. It spends its day perching upright in a hole in the rockwork with just its head poking out, darting after drifting food, then backing into its hideout tail first. Small, peaceful, reef safe and an easy eater, it is a perfect character fish for a nano or mid-size reef. In-store pickup only. One per tank is the rule, since two similar blennies will squabble over the best perch, and a lid is a good idea because blennies occasionally hop.
It looks like three fish stitched together: a yellow face with a huge red eye, a bold black band in the middle, and polka dots on the back half. Peaceful, easygoing and happy in a small group.
A fiery red nose and a black-and-white striped tail, and they school tighter than almost any tetra. Get a good group and watch them sweep the tank together.
Dressed for a formal event: a silver front, a deep blue-black tuxedo over the back half, and a big metallic blue tail. A big batch just came out of QT.
The Bolivian Ram at $11.99 is the dwarf cichlid we point beginners toward: all the charm, none of the bad attitude. Threadfins at $14.99 trail long, thread-like fins tipped in red. Clown Plecos at $9.99 stay small and love a piece of driftwood. Also on the floor: True Julii Corys, Green Neon Tetras and Clown Loaches.
The Falco at $30.99 perches on the rocks and watches everything. Yasha Gobies at $58.99 are white with orange-red stripes and like to pair up with a pistol shrimp. The Tailspot Blenny brings the goofy face. Also out: a Powder Brown Tang and a Yellow Coris Wrasse.
Just Landed, In Quarantine Now
A huge round of deliveries this week. These are doing their quarantine time now and will reach the showroom over the next couple of weeks.
Bright orange-red with black bars and blue-tipped fins. Halloween colors, on the dwarf angel everyone falls for.
A tang-lover's week, from the famous royal-blue hippo tang to the unicorn, which grows its horn as it matures. All of them want room to swim.
The Venustus is a striking angel in deep blue-purple and bright yellow, and the Lemonpeel is a bright lemon-yellow dwarf angel with electric blue trim around its eyes and fins.
A Clown Fairy Wrasse and a Fine-Spotted Fairy Wrasse pair, plus Green Mandarins and Scooter Dragonets for established tanks with plenty of pods. Neon Blue Cleaner Gobies, a Valentini Puffer and Chocolate Chip Starfish round it out.
A huge batch of tiny, glowing red Chili Rasboras for nano tanks. Even full grown they stay under an inch long, and a school of them glows like embers against green plants.
Panda, Sterbai and Pygmy Corys, L-144 Bushynose Plecos, Black Angelfish, Indian Glassfish (see the trivia answer below), Cherry Veiltail Barbs, Ember Tetras and Electric Blue Balloon Mollies.
Check Your Heater Before the First Cold Night
October nights are cooling off, and your heater is about to start working hard.
Most heaters coast through a Georgia summer. Then the first cold night hits, the heater suddenly has to run for hours, and that is when a tired one fails. A few minutes now saves a lot of heartache later.
On bigger tanks, use two smaller heaters instead of one big one. If one fails, the other keeps the tank from crashing, and if one sticks on, it cannot overheat the tank by itself as quickly. And always unplug the heater before a water change, so it never runs while it is sitting out of the water. If yours is more than a few years old, or you are not sure it is keeping up, bring your questions in and we will help you size a replacement.
Trivia, Answered
From this week's newsletter: one of the fish that just landed in our quarantine room is so see-through that you can see its skeleton. Which one is it? And what is the second "skeleton fish" already on our showroom floor?
The bonus answer is the Glass Catfish, on the showroom floor right now at $9.99. It is just as see-through, skeleton and all, and when the light hits a school of them just right, they shimmer with faint rainbow colors. Scientists traced that shimmer to the way their muscle fibers bend light. Unusually for a catfish, it hovers in open water instead of on the bottom, and it is happiest in a group.
On The Calendar
What's happening at the shop this month.
On the hour, at :20 and at :40, every day we are open, through October 31. Free, no tickets.
Save the date. We will share the details in an upcoming digest.
The Road Ahead
One thing checked off, and a few more almost here.
Rewards points at the kiosk: done
You can check your points at the customer kiosk now (see above). More of the rewards upgrade, with more rewards to choose from, is still on the way. Your current points carry over.
The tank expansion ships to us Monday, October 5
The new tanks ship to us on Monday, so they land over the next few weeks. If you have been in lately, you have seen the shop shifting around to get ready. The new cubes come first, then 48 new freshwater tanks, then 18 more saltwater tanks, and both sides of the shop get a lot deeper.
A coral kiosk
A screen at the frag racks where you can look up any coral we carry, read its care, light, flow and temperament, and see exactly which spot on the rack it is sitting in.
More WYSIWYG corals and bettas on our website
What you see is what you get. The photo online is the exact coral or betta you take home, not a stock image. The first ones are already up, and more are on the way.
Still Voting: Best of Gwinnett
We are still on the ballot, and you can vote once a day.
Squeaky's Aquatics is on the ballot for Gwinnett Magazine's Best of Gwinnett. Thank you to everyone who has been voting. If we have earned it, a vote a day keeps us moving up.
Vote for Squeaky's AquaticsCome See Us
Squeaky's Aquatics, 1885 Braselton Hwy, Suite D, Lawrenceville, GA 30043.
Mon, Tue, Thu 11am to 6pm. Fri and Sat 10am to 7pm. Sun 10am to 4pm. Closed Wednesdays for maintenance, with curbside pickup available.
Come catch a light show, check your points at the kiosk, see the Sand Waterfall tank pour in person, or ask about skipping the wait on a fish still in quarantine. Those conversations go better face to face. Get directions
Shopping with us online from somewhere else? Thank you, truly. You keep this little shop growing.
See you at the tanks,
Squeaky's Aquatics
