The Hobby
How a single ten-gallon tank on a Key West kitchen counter turned into a fishroom — and a promise we still keep on every order: every species we sell, we keep ourselves.
How it got out of hand
(in the best possible way)
It started with one tank.
A ten-gallon, a sponge filter, and six neon tetras from the corner shop. Half of them didn’t survive the first week — and that was the spark. If we were going to keep fish, we were going to learn to keep them right.
The rack that ate the garage.
One tank became four. Four became a wall. We learned to cycle, to test, to be patient. The garage hit 84 °F in July and we learned about chillers the hard way — salt air corrodes everything down here.
↳ ask us about the summer the canister gave up.
Every species, we keep ourselves.
We made a rule early: we don’t list a fish we haven’t kept, bred, or quarantined through a full cycle. When a care guide says groups of eight or more, it’s because ours sulked in groups of five — and we watched it happen.
From hobby to your doorstep.
We started shipping the overflow to fellow hobbyists, and the Live Arrival Guarantee wasn’t a marketing idea — it’s just how we’d want our own fish to travel. Packed at dawn, shipped from Mile Marker 0, healthy on arrival or we make it right.
The fishroom, fully nerded out
This is where every order comes from. No warehouse, no middle-man tanks — just a Key West fishroom run the way we’d run it for ourselves, because we are.
38 tanks · one room · Key West
Room spec sheet
// as of this morning’s head count
| Tanks online | 38 |
| Total water volume | ≈ 640 gal |
| Rack system | 3-tier 80/20 ext. + 2× grow-out |
| Central air | Linear piston pump, 70 L/min |
| Filtration | Matured sponge + canister |
| Lighting | ≈ 7,200 lm LED · 8 hr photoperiod |
| Water source | 4-stage RO/DI, remineralized |
| Holding temp | 76–78 °F (24.4–25.5 °C) |
| Quarantine | 3-tank QT bank · 14 day min. |
| Power backup | Battery + generator (storm season) |
Water
Every drop starts as RO/DI, then we build it back up to the parameters each species actually wants — no guessing from the tap.
Lighting
Modest, consistent light on timers. Enough to keep plants pearling without turning the room into an algae farm.
Climate
Key West is warm, so the fight is usually keeping cool. Room HVAC does the heavy lifting; heaters are the backup.
Automation
Smart plugs, an auto top-off, and temperature alarms on our phones. Fish do not wait for the weekend.
The fridge-door routine
The boring part nobody posts about. Consistency is the whole game — stability matters more than chasing exact numbers.
The wall, the fish, the messy bits
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Same hands that keep them, pack them.
Browse the livestock we breed and grow out right here, or read the guides we wish we’d had with that first ten-gallon.
— The JoJo Aquatics team, Key West, Florida.