Anyone who’s ever worked at the local fish store knows that bagging feeders for customers is one of the least glamorous parts of the job, and for marine aquarium shops, that staple is live brine shrimp. Live brine has been promoted as a live treat for aquarium fish for probably a hundred years, and ever since the beginning aquarium store workers have loathed going to the back to scoop up and bag a portion.
We’ve seen some stores get all this drudgery out of the way by prebagging portions of live brine shrimp to be sold throughout the day, but we think that a fish store in Lake Worth, Florida has figured out a great solution. Tanks A Lot has been in business for over a decade and one neat trick they’ve devised is to pre-package their portions of live brine shrimp in small styrofoam coffee cups.
Having all the live brine shrimp offered up in cups makes it that much easier to offer up to customers, pre-bagged and ready to go. It allows for the live brine shrimp to be fed to the fish in smaller increments, it allows the live brine shrimp to live longer since it can breathe and it streamlines the process of closing down the shop at the end of the night since the entire tray can be placed into a refrigerator.
The other really cool aspect about this type of packaging for live brine shrimp also allows aquarists to gut load their live brine shrimp with their preferred live brine food like phytoplankton in order to make them even more nutritious. We’ve visited a handful of aquarium stores during our aquarium career but this is the first time we’ve seen this particularly crafty method for offering live brine shrimp to customers.
And just so Tanks A Lot is not represented simply by a cup o’ brine and a dingy tray, here’s an image of the store so you can see the kind of great, well-rounded local fish store comes up with cool ideas like pre-cupped brine shrimp.
