Zakary2003
Active Member
I just made my second purchase from AJ's aquariums in St. Petersburg, Florida, and I had a great experience both times.
I was referred to AJ's by my upstairs neighbor. I hadn't heard of his store before and it wasn't one of the first few google results so I hadn't heard of him before despite him being like 10 minutes from my campus.
AJ is a super nice dude. He's also an alumni of the school I currently attend so that's neat. I spent way too long today trying to pick out a pair of clownfish and an anemone from his giant anemone system, but he was super helpful and patient and was super willing to answer all of my questions and help me pick. He told me everything I could possibly want to know about nexus anemones, including how quickly they grow, how often they split, how the pattern and color ratios change when they split, how he artificially splits them to ensure he doesn't lose the grafted colors, and how large they get before it's time to split them. If you're interested in nexus anemones, definitely reach out to him if you have any questions.
My first purchase was a few lower end SPS. They're all doing extremely well and are fully colored up. His pieces were way larger than the big vendors I've bought from before. The grafted montipora I bought from him was huge compared to the one I previously ordered from a larger vendor, like over 10x the size for less than half the price with a much better distribution of colors. The other corals were a bubblegum digi, jello shot acro, pink tip paletta acro and green slimer acro. They're also all doing great, and the acros are super encrusted onto the frag plug and certainly far from fresh cuts.
My second purchase was today. I got a pair of DaVinci clownfish and a small nexus anemone (about 1/4th green, not a 50/50 split). They are doing very well. The clownfish are super robust and healthy and were eating within an hour of being added to my system. They're also very socialized and come to the glass constantly to beg for food, so they're clearly well taken care of. The anemone is a bit small, but it looks super cool. If you buy a 50/50 split nexus nem, you'll get a larger one, but he didn't have too many of the cheaper nexus anemones left so the pickings were a bit slim.
I picked up my items in person because his store is right up the road from me. The systems are mostly large plastic containers and not traditional show tanks, but that doesn't stop them from looking awesome. His coral generally looks pretty healthy and the only "pests" I saw were green hair algae in every system and a little bit of bubble on one corner of one system. I saw no signs of coral eating pests or aiptasia. All of my corals were pest free (but I did get some free stomatella snails and micro brittle stars!).
His anemone tank is particularly stunning. If you were to buy a 50/50 split nexus anemone or a sunburst from him, you'd probably get a pretty large one. He had a huge number of rainbows and less than 50/50 nexus anemones. While he didn't have any for sale today, his sherman anemones were so bright that you could easily pick them out from the hundreds of other anemones and made even the sunbursts and rainbows look dull. It was truly an impressive anemone system.
He also had some very nice, super healthy longfin designer clownfish that will make someone very happy. The less fancy clownfish are all spread throughout his systems and are already hosting anemones. He didn't have many other fish for sale, but his clownfish were great.
The coral systems were packed full of some awesome stuff. There were some stunning torches, chalices, and gonis, and they pretty much all looked healthy. There were some scolymia not on his website yet that are absolutely incredible, and I haven't seen anything like them outside of the big coral shows like reefapalooza. There were some corals that were still a bit bleached from hurricanes Helene and Milton, particularly his micro gonis, but there's absolutely no chance he will send you one of those.
I'll buy more corals from him for sure. While I have no experience with having items shipped from AJ's aquariums, I'm confident you'll be happy with anything you buy given the quality of his livestock and the effort he puts into bagging up my little items that are only going 10 minutes up the road. If you want high end torches, SPS, goniopora, chalices, scolymia, clownfish, or anemones, definitely try AJ's aquariums. If you want good deals, he's got those too! Some of his corals are $20 or less, and they definitely aren't just the leftovers he couldn't charge full price for or the corals that aren't looking too hot. He even threw in some freebies for me (the green slimer was free). You won't be disappointed!
I've attached pictures of all the stuff I've bought from my two trips. They're all awesome (but take the colors with a little grain of salt because my samsung phone really likes to oversaturate green stuff when I'm using the coral lenses and r2r won't let me post the RAW files of what the camera actually takes before AI processing)
I was referred to AJ's by my upstairs neighbor. I hadn't heard of his store before and it wasn't one of the first few google results so I hadn't heard of him before despite him being like 10 minutes from my campus.
AJ is a super nice dude. He's also an alumni of the school I currently attend so that's neat. I spent way too long today trying to pick out a pair of clownfish and an anemone from his giant anemone system, but he was super helpful and patient and was super willing to answer all of my questions and help me pick. He told me everything I could possibly want to know about nexus anemones, including how quickly they grow, how often they split, how the pattern and color ratios change when they split, how he artificially splits them to ensure he doesn't lose the grafted colors, and how large they get before it's time to split them. If you're interested in nexus anemones, definitely reach out to him if you have any questions.
My first purchase was a few lower end SPS. They're all doing extremely well and are fully colored up. His pieces were way larger than the big vendors I've bought from before. The grafted montipora I bought from him was huge compared to the one I previously ordered from a larger vendor, like over 10x the size for less than half the price with a much better distribution of colors. The other corals were a bubblegum digi, jello shot acro, pink tip paletta acro and green slimer acro. They're also all doing great, and the acros are super encrusted onto the frag plug and certainly far from fresh cuts.
My second purchase was today. I got a pair of DaVinci clownfish and a small nexus anemone (about 1/4th green, not a 50/50 split). They are doing very well. The clownfish are super robust and healthy and were eating within an hour of being added to my system. They're also very socialized and come to the glass constantly to beg for food, so they're clearly well taken care of. The anemone is a bit small, but it looks super cool. If you buy a 50/50 split nexus nem, you'll get a larger one, but he didn't have too many of the cheaper nexus anemones left so the pickings were a bit slim.
I picked up my items in person because his store is right up the road from me. The systems are mostly large plastic containers and not traditional show tanks, but that doesn't stop them from looking awesome. His coral generally looks pretty healthy and the only "pests" I saw were green hair algae in every system and a little bit of bubble on one corner of one system. I saw no signs of coral eating pests or aiptasia. All of my corals were pest free (but I did get some free stomatella snails and micro brittle stars!).
His anemone tank is particularly stunning. If you were to buy a 50/50 split nexus anemone or a sunburst from him, you'd probably get a pretty large one. He had a huge number of rainbows and less than 50/50 nexus anemones. While he didn't have any for sale today, his sherman anemones were so bright that you could easily pick them out from the hundreds of other anemones and made even the sunbursts and rainbows look dull. It was truly an impressive anemone system.
He also had some very nice, super healthy longfin designer clownfish that will make someone very happy. The less fancy clownfish are all spread throughout his systems and are already hosting anemones. He didn't have many other fish for sale, but his clownfish were great.
The coral systems were packed full of some awesome stuff. There were some stunning torches, chalices, and gonis, and they pretty much all looked healthy. There were some scolymia not on his website yet that are absolutely incredible, and I haven't seen anything like them outside of the big coral shows like reefapalooza. There were some corals that were still a bit bleached from hurricanes Helene and Milton, particularly his micro gonis, but there's absolutely no chance he will send you one of those.
I'll buy more corals from him for sure. While I have no experience with having items shipped from AJ's aquariums, I'm confident you'll be happy with anything you buy given the quality of his livestock and the effort he puts into bagging up my little items that are only going 10 minutes up the road. If you want high end torches, SPS, goniopora, chalices, scolymia, clownfish, or anemones, definitely try AJ's aquariums. If you want good deals, he's got those too! Some of his corals are $20 or less, and they definitely aren't just the leftovers he couldn't charge full price for or the corals that aren't looking too hot. He even threw in some freebies for me (the green slimer was free). You won't be disappointed!
I've attached pictures of all the stuff I've bought from my two trips. They're all awesome (but take the colors with a little grain of salt because my samsung phone really likes to oversaturate green stuff when I'm using the coral lenses and r2r won't let me post the RAW files of what the camera actually takes before AI processing)
