In November 1979 I opened my first store in Beltway Plaza Mall (400 sq ft.) called Beltway Plaza Aquarium.

After the first year I moved to a bigger store (1200 sq ft.) and started selling birds and small animals.

Maybe a year or 2 later I opened up my second store in Adelphi, MD (1600 sq ft) selling only Fish.

a year or 2 later I opened up my third store in Capital Plaza Mall. (2500 sq ft.)

After that I enlarged the Beltway Plaza location to (1600 sq ft.) and redecorated the store with everything new.

The lease was up on the Adelphi store and I moved it to a larger location in Langley Park. Only stayed in that location for about 2 years and moved to a better location right on the corner of New Hampshire ave University Blvd.

Then I bought another store in Laurel Lakes Shopping Center that was not doing well

Then I bought a store in Dupont Circle (Very High Rent Area). That made 5 stores at one time.  That store did not do well so I closed it down after a few months and sold off the assets.

Business was dropping off due to the big box stores coming to town like Pet Stuff so I sold the Laurel Lakes store.

After 13 years in Beltway Plaza they brought in a 16,000 sq ft super store and told me I could move out if I wanted to. So I moved to an old Highs Store on Allentown Rd. and closed up the Langley Park store.

Now there was Pet Stuff, Pet Smart and Pet Co in town and that took most of my business so I closed up the Allentown store and moved everything into the Capital Plaza store. After a year or two the Mall owners decided to knock down the mall and build a Walmart in that location so again I had nowhere to go. I then moved to an old A&P location in Laurel, MD. Very large store (23,000 sq ft.) I had an option in the lease that I could move out after a year and a half and the store as too expensive to operate.

Then I moved into Riverdale and changed the name to Riverdale Pets. Stayed there for 7 years and the shopping center had new owners and they wanted to triple my rent so again I had to move.

That’s when I moved to Brentwood (Back in the Cut) a basement location but it was the only thing I could find that I could afford. A friend of mine owned the building but after a few years there he sold the building to somebody that I did not get along with. They would not paint the building or cut the grass. It was truly a ghetto location. My lease was up so I moved back to Beltway Plaza Mall because Pet Smart had moved out a couple of years ago so the owner of the mall let me back in and business was really good. After a couple of years the Mall wanted my location to make a larger store for TJ Max so I had to move again to the other end of the mall.

After that I was doing well and had some trouble with birds and got too much problems with the County so again I had to move. Now we are in Waldorf on Crain Highway in a smaller store and selling only fish. We are trying to bring in the most exotic fish available from over the world.

We are here for now and hope to stay for a while. I am really tired of moving.

 

3306 Crain Highway Waldorf, MD 20603