Vote for Us, Meet Pip, and Raid the New Freezer
The full story behind this week's newsletter: we are on the ballot for Best of Gwinnett, a new, larger freezer is in and stocked, Pip joins the crew, and our quarantine room has been busier than it has been all year.
Welcome back to your weekly stop at Squeaky's Aquatics. It has been a few weeks since the last digest, and we have been busy. First, Squeaky's Aquatics is on the ballot for Best of Gwinnett, and voting is open. We added a new, larger freezer and filled it with the complete Hikari Bio-Pure frozen lineup. Live adult brine shrimp are now available, bottled fresh here every day. We would like you to meet Pip, the newest member of the crew. And a long list of fish just worked their way through quarantine and onto the showroom floor. Here is everything.
Vote for Us in Best of Gwinnett
Voting is open, and you can vote once a day, every day.
Squeaky's Aquatics is on the ballot for Gwinnett Magazine's Best of Gwinnett, and the only thing that moves us up is votes from people who know us. We are still a small family shop, and every bit of our growth has come from you: the folks who come in to talk tanks, trust us with their fish, and keep coming back.
As we keep growing, we promise to keep doing our best to get better every week: more tanks, healthier livestock, better advice, and a shop you are glad to walk into. If we have earned it, please vote for us, and vote every day. You can vote once a day, every day, and every single vote counts. Bookmark the link and come back tomorrow. It would mean the world to us.
Vote for Squeaky's Aquatics todayNow Available: Live Adult Brine Shrimp
Freshly bottled here at the shop, every single day. While supplies last.
We are now bottling live adult brine shrimp fresh at the shop every day, and keeping them cool until you pick them up. Frozen food is great, but nothing gets a picky eater going like food that swims. It is one of the best ways to get a new arrival eating, and good enrichment for anything that likes to hunt.
Small $8.99 · Medium $12.99. Each day's batch is limited, so when today's bottles are gone, they are gone until tomorrow. In-store pickup only.
Feeding tip: for freshwater tanks, pour them through a net first so you are not adding the salty bottle water, and feed only what your fish clear in a couple of minutes.
Reserve a bottleJust Swam In: A Bigger Freezer, Fully Stocked
A new double-door freezer, and the full Hikari Bio-Pure lineup to fill it.
If you have been in lately, you have seen it. We added a new, larger double-door freezer right between the two we already had. That is a lot more room for frozen food, all lit, organized and labeled behind glass, so you can see everything we carry before you open a door.
And we filled it. The entire Hikari Bio-Pure frozen line is in, from staples to specialty blends. Frozen food is in-store pickup only, so it goes home solid instead of thawing in a delivery truck.
The everyday staples: Mysis Shrimp at $6.99, Brine Shrimp at $6.99 and Blood Worms at $5.99. The upgrades: Spirulina Mysis, Omega Enriched Brine, and Jumbo Mysis at $17.49 for the bigger mouths. For reefs, there's Coral Gumbo, Cyclopod+ and Ocean Plankton. And for the picky eaters, there's Mega-Marine Angel, Discus, Clam on a Half Shell and Krill. Hikari gamma-irradiates the Bio-Pure line, which is a big part of why we trust it.
Pacific Plankton at $10.00 is a single-ingredient krill, about the size of a big mysis, loaded with omega-3s and astaxanthin, so it doubles as a color food for anthias, wrasses and LPS corals. Predator Blend at $12.00 is the one for triggers, puffers and anything with an appetite.
Sexy Shrimp at $19.99 are tiny, orange-and-white, and constantly wiggling their tails in the air, which is exactly how they got the name. Snow Amanos at $5.99 are the white version of the hardest-working algae eater in freshwater. Red Ramshorn Snails at $3.49 came in with them.
One colony, and the photo on the listing is this exact piece. It's a full dome packed with little eight-armed polyps, bright green in the center, so when it's open it looks like a pincushion of green stars. Underneath is what gives it the name: a brick-red skeleton built from rows of tiny upright tubes, like the pipes of an organ. It's a rare look in a reef tank. There is only one, so when it's gone, it's gone. In-store pickup only.
Also new on the shelves: PolypLab Genesis Rock at $39.99, the HM Digital TDS-3 meter at $19.99 for checking your RO water, and Red Sea ReefSense calibration packs.
Marked Down This Week
The online headliners. And a heads up: plenty more deals are in-store only.
A canister with a built-in UV sterilizer, sized for 60 to 90 gallon tanks, with one-push priming so you skip the messy siphon start. The bigger FZ13 for 125 to 175 gallons is on sale too, at $229.49.
Two optical sensors plus a mechanical float as a backup. It learns how long a normal top-off takes and shuts off if something looks wrong. It works on its own, or plugs into an Apex. Steady salinity is one of the easiest ways to keep a reef happy.
A gyre pump pushes a wide, even sheet of water across the whole tank instead of one narrow jet, which is the easy fix for dead spots behind the rockwork. The onboard controller keeps it simple, and it runs quietly.
Fresh Out of Quarantine
These finished a full stay in our quarantine room before moving to the showroom floor.
The showpiece of the tang family, and it just finished quarantine. A silvery olive body, a black mask around bright yellow lips, sweeping yellow and black fins, and two fixed orange blades at the base of the tail, which is why it is also called the Orangespine Unicornfish. This is a large one, eating hard and cruising nonstop. Worth being upfront: Nasos swim open water all day, so it needs a big tank, and length matters more than depth. If you have the room, it is one of the most impressive fish you can put in it. In-store pickup only.
Deep blue with an orange-gold center, and one of the hardiest dwarf angels you can keep. It's a great first angel, but watch your LPS and clam mantles, since some individuals like to nibble.
A swallowtail angel, which is the rare angelfish that is actually reef safe. It eats plankton in open water instead of picking at corals. It's silver with black pinstripes and cruises the whole tank.
A neon with extra sparkle along the whole body, so a school of them flashes like glitter under a planted tank light. Twenty-three of them just came out of QT together.
It sifts your sand bed all day, mouthful by mouthful, keeping it clean and stirred. Give it a deep enough sand bed and a tight lid, because gobies jump. Alongside it: Green Mandarins at $34.99 for established tanks with plenty of pods.
The bumblebee cat at $8.99 is gold and black and comes out at night. Odessa Barbs at $5.99 are the males with a red stripe that gets brighter the happier they are. Also on the floor: Balloon Mollies at $4.99, Bushynose Plecos from $10.99, Harlequin Rasboras, Kamaka Rainbows and Koi Tuxedo guppies.
Just Landed, In Quarantine Now
The top grabs from this week's shipments. They're doing their quarantine time now and will reach the showroom over the next couple of weeks.
Red-orange with black bars along the back fin. It's the dwarf angel everyone falls for.
Three tangs for big tanks. The clown tang wears electric blue and orange pinstripes, and the unicorn grows its famous horn as it matures.
A small saddled puffer with a big secret. See the trivia answer below.
Three favorite nano fish in one shipment. The jawfish digs its own burrow and hovers above it, the firefish flicks its long dorsal fin, and the Yasha pairs up with a pistol shrimp.
A filefish that eats pest anemones, and a pair of Falco Hawkfish, little perch-and-watch fish with plenty of personality.
A strong freshwater week. There are peaceful rams, golden honey gouramis, and clown loaches that love company. Clown Plecos, Black Moor goldfish, Sparkling Gouramis and Indian Glassfish are in QT too.
How to Feed Frozen Food the Right Way
Since the freezer is full, here's the answer we give at the counter.
Frozen food is one of the best things you can feed your fish. But the usual habit of dropping a cube straight into the tank is the wrong way to do it.
One more thing: keep it frozen until you use it. If a pack has thawed and refrozen, you'll usually see it as one solid block of ice. That's why our frozen food is in-store pickup only.
Trivia, Answered
From this week's newsletter: one fish in our quarantine room is so toxic that a completely different fish evolved to copy its exact look as a disguise. Which fish is it?
Introducing Pip
The newest member of the Squeaky's crew is a little robot pufferfish.
Meet Pip. We designed Pip in-house, and if you have been in the shop lately, you may have already met. Pip greets you at the customer kiosk and can call one of us over when you need a hand. Pip guides you through the plant tablet and flags down help there too. And Pip makes some of the announcements you hear over the store speakers.
Pip works behind the scenes as well. Pip lives in the system our team uses to run the shop, keeping track of daily tank care, water changes and to-do lists, and nudging us when something is due, so nothing slips through the cracks.
The Road Ahead
New announcements, and a few things that are almost here.
The tank expansion, about 2 to 3 weeks out
If you have been in lately, you have seen the shop shifting around to get ready. We are estimating about two to three more weeks. 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.
WYSIWYG corals and bettas on our website
What you see is what you get. The photo online will be the exact coral or betta you take home, not a stock image, so you can pick your favorite from home before you come in.
Our new rewards points system is almost here
It is almost ready, and it comes with new rewards to go with it. It will be much easier to check your points balance, with more ways to earn and redeem them. Already have points with us? None of them will be lost. They carry straight over to the new system.
Come 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 see the new freezer, say hi to Pip, check out the Pipe Organ Coral in person, or ask about skipping the wait on a fish still in quarantine. Those conversations go better face to face.
Shopping with us online from somewhere else? Thank you, truly. You keep this little shop growing.
See you at the tanks,
Squeaky's Aquatics
