Reef By Steele
10K Club member
WE GOT THE REEF!
SAVE 26% ON OUR EXTENSIVE SELECTION OF COPEPOD & PHYTO BUFFETS, MACRO ALGAE & CLEAN UP CREW MEMBERS.
Sherry and I have been blissfully married for 9,496.5 days or 312 months OK 26 years. What an awesome journey and partnership.
1095.75 days, 36 months or yes, 3 years ago we became Reef2Reef Sponsors, and oh what an adventure this has been.
Having been in this hobby for the last 35 years, I still marvel at the amazing array of beauty and tranquility I find in our tanks and their inhabitants. Plus, I owe my amazing life with Sherry to reefing. While living in Western Nebraska and doing business with a very small LFS, a reefing newbie stopped in for advice. The owner didn’t have the knowledge to answer his questions, but said he had a customer who could (me). After getting my permission the shop owner gave Mike my number. A friendship developed and later Mike’s wife asked Mike to invite me to the Diner/Ice Cream shop she Managed to let a friend check me out. Guess her friend was impressed lol. I still take joy in Sherry and Calliope’s reactions and engagement with our little friends. lol Sherry will call out from the CUC room “I just saw Sally (Sally Lightfoot crab), she is snuggling with a Trochus!”
EXPERIENCE THE STEELE ADVANTAGE!
Yeah, I know, catchy slogan, but what does it mean?
As active fellow reefers, we have the same wants and desires as our customers. We also share the same experiences that you all do. For this reason we understand the struggles we all face. We are dedicated to providing the best customer service, offering products at the lowest possible prices, ensuring the health and safety of all the animals in our care.
Personalized customer service is a key part of our business culture. Whether accommodating a specific targeted delivery date, rescheduling a delivery due to tank issues, or just taking the time to talk with a customer via chat or phone, after God and family our customers are our number one priority.
Caring for and selecting the animals in our care. Sherry (and sometimes I) walk our tanks multiple times a day, righting errant snails, checking parameters, and observing for any issues or cautionary signs. When selecting CUC for shipping, we select only specimens that are actively attached to the glass, visibly active or other signs to ensure they leave us in the best possible condition.
When we started I sieved through a series of different micron screens, and would later find copepods in the “waste water” if I didn’t dump it in a couple of days. I found out that nauplii, and copepodites were passing through the larger screens. While others sieve the adult stage copepods, leaving the nauplii and copepodites in their system for faster regeneration, we sieve at extremely low micron levels to include these life stages along with the adults. From a visible customer standpoint, lots of adult pods are appealing, from a customer tank benefit not so much. Receiving all life stages of copepods greatly enhances their likelihood of colonizing in your tanks as they progress through their life stages, vs aged adult copepods who are nearing or have passed the end of their reproductive prime, being more of a single serving food source.
Our phytoplankton production follows the strictest protocols pertaining to sterility and quality. Every vessel we use is marked and used only with the same strain. Each is cleaned and sterilized through a multi step process between batches. Our water is filtered through RODI, then mixed with Brightwell Aquatics NeoMarine REEF salt mix, where others use Instant Ocean or other cheaper products making the culture and the end product more closely aligned with the parameters and trace elements of the water we use in our reef systems. What constitutes high quality phytoplankton? Is it color, darkness, or something else. While there are many methods available to concentrate phytoplankton during or post production, most do not improve the product. Our concentrated Phyto Buffet Extreme is produced through natural settling in a specialized commercial refrigeration unit allowing it to maintain a temperature that retains the phytos viability. The various methods used by others include heat evaporation (damages the cellular wall if not outright killing the Phyto), centrifuging (also extensive cell wall degradation), additives (one vendor uses a product used for thickening gelatin and other cooking products), settling and pouring off the clear or clearer water (method we employ, but only works on certain strains dependent upon fat content) or culturing right up to the edge of culture crash. Once a culture reaches a certain point the overall cell density becomes a light inhibitor causing a weakening of the cells. We take great pride in receiving customer comments that our phytoplankton is the only one they have used that either reduced nutrients or elicited a feeding response from their SPS corals.
Prior to shipping, Sherry or I check the Weather Channel App (during my contracting days I found it to be the most reliable) for both our temperature but also every customers destination temperatures. When we see concerns we reach out via email to offer upgraded shipping options or encourage holding for better conditions. We also use this information to determine the amount of packaging, and additions for shipping. Whether we double wrap in thermal with ice packed between or use one wrap, the amount of ice we add or which heat pack duration to include. Not always easy decisions, as too much ice can be as harmful as too little. We honestly feel remorse and sadness if any of our products arrive DOA, although the replacement cost obviously weigh in, for us it is about our critters not the inconvenience or expense. Fortunately we have a successful rate that is nearly perfect and of those losses the majority are due to shipping delays.
So why don’t we ship every package in styrofoam? Reefing is not always a budget friendly hobby lol, so we are focused on offering the best value possible. In my years of retail management and life itself, I learned nothing is FREE. Free delivery, stickers, candy etc. all have to be factored into a business’s costs. With boxes ranging from $10-$28 each, and size and weight effect shipping costs, our pricing would have to take a significant increase. But more importantly, we care about the environment and our impact on it. Styrofoam boxes add size and weight which increases fuel consumption by the carrier, and at the end of the trip almost all of them are going to find their way to a landfill. For this reason we offer styrofoam as an upgrade option so that only those customers who need the added protection can access this benefit without everyone having to pay the cost. Our styrofoam upgrade pricing is less than the actual cost to us, why? We share in the additional cost to make it more affordable for our customers and feel we save money on the back side by minimizing DOA claims and expenses.
While we use the above method to help keep our pricing lower, our business model is designed with volume as the key factor. In order to maintain current pricing (especially in our current and previous inflationary environment) we need your continued support. Help Sherry and I celebrate these major milestones with your order today!
LOW PRICES + HIGH QUALITY = GREAT VALUE!
SHOP NOW AND SAVE 26% OFF YOUR $150* or more purchase of our extensive collection of Copepod and Phyto Buffets, Clean Up Crew Members, and Macro Algae.
https://reefbysteele.com/collections/current-specials
*Offer valid on qualifying purchases of our Copepod and Phyto Buffets, and Clean Up Crew Members. Excludes CUC Packs, Kits, Brightwell Aquatics and our Hard Line Goods.
Thank you and Have a Blessed Week!
Kent and Sherry
