Edmonds aquarium shop attracts a school of online followers

Before he gets out of bed in the morning, Cory McElroy, owner of Aquarium Co-op in Edmonds, is on his phone answering store emails and questions left by his YouTube viewers.

His work day begins about 8 a.m. and he’s lucky to finish by 10 p.m. This is repeated every day of the week. The Everett native doesn’t take a day off. Ever.

“My wife thinks this is devouring all of my time,” said McElroy, 34.

This devotion to his fish store has paid off, not only in a business that is turning a comfortable profit, but also in growing online celebrity.

Aquarium Co-op’s YouTube channel now has over 55,000 subscribers around the world who eagerly await the livestreams and videos that McElroy uploads several times a week.

He’s often recognized in public. Even on a recent business trip to San Francisco, he was approached by fans who asked if he was “Cory of Aquarium Co-op,” a phrase from the opening of his videos.

“It’s cool to meet up with fans but it’s awkward at the same time because I’m just as much of a fan and a fish keeper as they are,” McElroy said. “I’m just a normal guy. I just show people what I do with my fish tanks.”

McElroy has done so much more.

Since he opened his store at 9661 Firdale Ave. in Edmonds four years ago, he’s developed his own line of Aquarium Co-op products.

The most popular of these is Easy Green — an all-in-one fertilizer that simplifies aquarium plant care in a way that had not been done previously in the industry.

This sort of innovative thinking, combined with his prolific online presence and determination to succeed, is part of the reason why he was honored with a Pet Age Forty Under 40 award in the December issue of Pet Age magazine.

While McElroy is a driven worker, he makes no secret of the fact that he didn’t get where he is without help. For a start, he credits his silent business partner, Steve Mason, who took a chance on him and put up a lot of the funding.

He also credits Andy Swanson, a carpenter, welder and fish enthusiast in Island County. Swanson invested more than just money in the enterprise. He offered guidance and sweat equity. With a failed fish business in his own past, Swanson knew the pitfalls that McElroy could face.

“Cory is a hard worker and that’s the real point that you have to know about Cory,” Swanson said. “He absolutely pushed himself and worked hard to make that happen and that’s a key when you want to make a business. If he’s awake, he’s doing something to the benefit of that store.”

It was Swanson who managed to put a high-end finish on aquarium racks made of 2×4’s so that they would blend unobtrusively into the boutique atmosphere of the under 1,000 square-foot Edmonds shop. Swanson also approves of the laborious, behind-the-scenes quality control McElroy provides.

Fish geeks from around Washington and beyond travel many miles in order to buy a fish at Aquarium Co-op because McElroy quarantines all of his stock. Every incoming fish goes into a quarantine tank, is dosed with an appropriate amount of wormer or other medications, and is not put into the showroom until McElroy is satisfied with its size, health, and appearance.

This unusual step may mean holding onto a shipment of young fish until they grow out to a suitable level or feeding up a batch that came in looking poorly.

It’s unheard of in an industry where wholesalers are seeing how fast they can turn around a fish shipment and big retailers are selling on the day of receipt to avoid any losses themselves.

McElroy has proven that the wait, work and expense all make good business sense. No one wants a newly purchased fish to suddenly clamp its fins and die, or, worse, infect the rest of the tank with a preventable disease.

“If you focus on the customer always having a good experience it seems like it doesn’t make monetary sense but in the end it makes a lot of sense because you’ve got a repeat customer who likes what we’re doing,” McElroy explained.

Although there are constant requests, Aquarium Co-op does not currently offer live fish for sale through its website. It does have many other products available online. These are shipped quickly, sometimes the same day.

When he’s not in the store himself, McElroy is usually in the studio preparing for his next video or updating his social media. In addition to the store website, you can find Aquarium Co-op on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

McElroy also created the WAFishBox web forum where hobbyists can socialize and talk fish.

McElroy’s most visible accomplishment is on YouTube. He explains complex issues in a down-to-earth way. He’s able to talk about Apistogramma cacatuoides without coming off as pretentious or patronizing and he clearly enjoys helping people.

Brandon Flynn, a 13-year-old from British Columbia, who has his own small but growing YouTube channel, credits McElroy for some of his success.

“Last June, by fluke, I stumbled upon his livestream in my recommended section on YouTube,” Brandon said. “I went onto the livestream and Cory and the community he has built around his channel welcomed me immediately.”

Flynn has traveled to Aquarium Co-op a few times since and has interviewed McElroy on his own Flynn’s Fish Forum YouTube channel. McElroy is eager to offer advice and assistance.

McElroy is also a frequent guest on another fish-related YouTube show. Bob Steenfott, of the Marysville-based Steenfott Aquatics YouTube channel, met McElroy three or four years ago. The two struck up a friendship after Steenfott visited Aquarium Co-op.

“Cory has managed to build an entire community around the aquarium hobby through YouTube,” Steenfott said. “Bringing together people from all over the world and allowing them a positive place to interact and learn.”

He also enjoys bouncing ideas off McElroy as they discuss their respective channels together. While many of McElroy’s videos are educational, many also center around his busy activities at the store and a running joke about tacos.

People enjoy watching a weary but philosophic McElroy picking up a delayed shipment of live fish from air cargo at 3 a.m. in winter. They mourn with him when he opens a shipment to find many fish are dead because the wholesaler forgot to put in the heat packs and sympathize when he talks about Hank, his beloved Mbu pufferfish the size of a Chihuahua, that died.

McElroy will tell you how to cope with algae, breed plecos or hatch brine shrimp. He fields questions during livestreams and films himself feeding clams to Hank’s successor, Murphy, another Mbu puffer. Murphy, incidentally, has his own dedicated live cam at the Aquarium Co-op website.

Lately, McElroy has been taking on more speaking engagements. His presentation to San Jose’s Pacific Coast Cichlid Association in March was about what it takes to run a fish store. In fact, the number of questions he gets about running a business is making him consider a new YouTube channel just for that topic.

Currently, McElroy has no grand plans for the expansion of his business. He just wants to concentrate on making what he has even better.

McElroy admits he needs to work on his work and life balance. He’d like to be able to spend more time with his wife Katie who has been always been there for him, coming down to help with the store after a long day at her own career .

“But the problem with the workload I’m keeping is, if I don’t stay on top of it, it becomes unmanageable,” McElroy said. “When I travel, sometimes I come back to 1,000 emails.”

His wife did force him to take a vacation once. They traveled to Japan where they enjoyed visiting the local fish stores. Incidentally, you can see a video about those Japanese fish stores on the Aquarium Co-op YouTube channel. McElroy couldn’t resist.