Aquarium Maintenance Business

We're thinking of expanding into the aquarium maintenance business.
Anyone here with experience that can share some tips?

Thanks
Jack

 

Have good insurance. Remember that you are entering their house or business....often times at odd hours. Additionally, if their 10 year old aquarium that has been serviced by you for only 3 months starts leaking, they won't blame it on an old aquarium, they will blame it on you.
Have a contract that is VERY detailed. (Who pays for which supplies, what are the charges for emergency or non-scheduled visits, how often tank is to be serviced, what exactly does a visit entail, etc)
Be cleanSterilize all nets in between different tanks. You can make your own sterilizers but there are pre-made products too like Jungle Net Soak. Keep multiple towels so that you can use a different towels at each place you visit that day.
Use the Yellow Pages Find all doctors offices and dentist offices near you. Send a postcard to them offering a free analysis of their tank and a free bid.
Price yourself comparable to current maintenance companies If you're substantially more than what they are paying, it's a hard sell to get them to switch.

Remember, if you're not already attached to a LFS, you are the enemy (competition) even if they don't service aquariums themselves. Meeting with the owners and trying to work out an agreement with them will do wonders. For instance, I had one company. I promised not to poach their customers, they promised to buy all supplies, fish, etc from me. It was a win-win situation.

 

I worked for an aquarium maintenance company for a few years before opening up my own business. The above poster is 100% right about everything.

When I officially started the business I already had a decent amount of accounts, so the money was there. It's very difficult to find new customers. I did the phone book thing and was introduced to a bunch plenty of prospect accounts but majority of which did not work. Example, I visited a doctors office who was looking to hire somebody more reliable. They told me they were paying him $50 every 2 weeks to come in and do the service. I wasn't too happy but at the time I just wanted more accounts, so I told them that $50 would work- plus the cost of water/floss/carbon/etc. They said "absolutely not".

I usually charge $80/hr plus the cost of water/any dry goods I need to sell them. I don't charge for stuff like filter floss, and I don't charge for everything little thing that I do (I worked for a company, they service you're aquarium but would charge $10 to clean the skimmer, $10 to vacuum gravel, etc). I did work a deal out with some of my customers.. Such as a flat rate, which I still make money on.

1 thing that I have learned from this type of business..... If the tank is in such poor quality, just walk away. If it's something you're setting up, take pride in it and do it just like you would a tank of your own. You'll thank yourself down the road when the tank is easy to work on, and has very little problems.

 

Very good info. Thanks. I was leaning towards charging a flat rate instead of hourly.
The flat rate would be in 3 tiers based on how much work they wanted us to perform.
Each tier would spell out excatly what is included with the last tier including everything
but equipment and livestock. Unscheduled visits would be extra.

I'm afraid the first account is what you warn about. A doctor's office has a reef tank
that was abandoned by the maintenance company. As it turns out, they service mostly fresh water and didn't know much about reef tanks. This one is a mess.

Jack

 

Well you won't know until you find out. I'd make an appointment to speak to them about the tank. The best case scenario is its a doctor that knows the tank is messed up, but wants to keep it in the office and make it look good. You can certainly upgrade some stuff to be more suitable for a reef tank.
..and the worst case being that they really don't even want the tank and they don't want to spend money on upgrading it.

Its a very lucrative business. I really enjoy it. Sometimes lugging 5 gallon jugs around is a pain in the @$$, but some of my stops have on site R/O. You get to meet alot of great people also. I have like 7 or 8 customers that I didn't know when they hired me- but now after going to them once a week for 4 or 5 years and seeing them all the time, watching their babies turn into kids etc. and now I consider them to be good friends. This might not be helping me make money, since I'm not really marking stuff up much for this handful of customers that I am close with.. but as long as I continue to treat them as I do I'm sure I won't have any issues with them going to any other company.

And another positive thing... what hobbyist doesn't want to have dozens of tanks that they don't have to pay for, and that they get paid to maintain.

 

That's likely the greatest benefit of doing tank-related service. I imagine most won't be coral, but you might get to deal with a bunch of fish you normally wouldn't be able to.

 

Never assume they aren't willing to make a change. One of my largest projects involved the entire re-working of an 850 g aquarium in a children's hospital. I was asked to look at it and they told me why they were dissatisfied with their tank. Looking at what they had currently and mentally calculating what it would cost to give them what they desired, I figured "Well, this was a waste of time...when I tell them how much this is going to cost, it'll never happen". I didn't quit right then though which was a good thing.....THEN IT HAPPENED. I asked to see the filtration and they had a very large external pump COMPLETELY COATED IN SALT CREEP INCLUDING FILLING IN THE COOLING HOLES. Because it was hard wired into the electrical I couldn't just unplug it. I told the person I was with that I needed the power cut immediately because this was a SERIOUS FIRE HAZARD. Within 2 minutes, not only did I have the head of maintence staring over my shoulder the CEO of the hospital was there too. I volunteered my time to clean the pump and service it for free because there were kids on crutches and wheelchairs and I didn't want a fire. The next day I got a call from the CEO. She said, "What will it cost to give us what we want"? I gave her an estimate and she said, "Wow!!! That much?? Ok, if that's what it will cost, that's what it will cost. When can you start?"

You just never know what will happen so it's worth at least a few minutes of your time to go.