By the time I made it to Gallery Aquatica in Brisbane Australia, I had already toured so many stores and one great wholesaler that I didn’t think I could get much more excited. Boy was I wrong because stepping into Gallery Aquatica was like walking into the kind of LFS that I would have built myself back in my retail days.
Despite being a smallish space, Gallery Aquatica is run by Cam & Ania, two diehard reefers who have created one helluva retail reef aquarium store environment. The place is packed floor to ceiling with good useful products, tons of fun aquarium accessories, and LOTS of live corals.
I saw more frags at Gallery Aquatica than all the other Aussie reef stores combined, and I loved how they presented and organized their corals. Ania’s passion for the nuances of different coral strains definitely affected me with a reignited passion for Ricordea yuma and Goniopora corals.
It’s amazing how much we can learn about our own country and culture by visiting other far flung places, and if you’re traveling with eyes wide open, the reef aquarium life is no different. Gallery Aquatica was the perfect shop to wind down my Australia travels, because it provided the most profound comparison with the American reef scene yet, as you can clearly see in the store walkthrough video below.
