About Us

OUR STORY

We're a small Chicago-based online aquatics store, owned and run by a young couple who is passionate about fish-keeping. After discovering that plants not only grow on land, but underwater too, we ditched all the fake plastic plants in our aquariums for live aquatic plants, and slowly started to learn more about aquascaping. Shortly after, we decided to turn our hobby into a small business! We started off with selling trimmings of our plants on Reddit, but since we couldn't keep up with the demand for our plants, we decided to expand and started sourcing our plants from Small Family Run Plant Nurseries and Local Wholesalers, and growing the plants in our own aquariums before selling them to our customers to ensure the plants and fish they receive are healthy. We still continue to sell trimmings of plants from our own personal aquariums, and if possible, breed any fish we sell over buying them from wholesalers to ensure they are healthy, well cared for, and fully acclimated to Chicago tap water.

OUR MISSION

Our mission is to offer affordable healthy aquatic plants and fish and to provide outstanding customer service to all of our customers. We aim to enable other fish-keepers and aquarists to keep their aquariums healthy and their fish happy while doing so affordably. We believe that anyone can be successful in this hobby, whether you are just starting out your first aquarium or are a seasoned veteran. Our main goal is to ensure that your first experience with us and live plants is a positive one, and to ensure that you start off on the right foot if you are new to the hobby.

Feel free to contact us if you need any help or recommendations (even if you are just starting out) and we will try our best to assist you! We believe that this hobby is a continuous learning journey. We were all "newbies" ourselves at one point, so we would love to help share the knowledge that we have learned along the way! We appreciate all forms of feedback and recommendations, as we pride ourselves in constantly trying to improve your experience with us, and learning how we can best help and serve you as our customer. We truly appreciate all the support our customers have given us along the way, and we look forward to continuing to bring you the best products in the hobby.

MEET OUR TEAM!

Team Picture
Gabriella (Left)

Founder of Windy City Aquariums

Craig (Right)

Co-Founder of Windy City Aquariums

I run the majority of Windy City Aquariums, and I'm in charge of sales, marketing, design, operations, customer service, etc. 
 

 I mostly help with procurement, liaising with our suppliers, tank maintenance, and research on improving the tech and methods that we use to keep our plants and fish. 

WHY CHOOSE US?

 

At Windy City Aquariums, we take great pride in keeping our plants and livestock as healthy as possible. We understand how discouraging this can be for many people, especially those who are new to the hobby. This is why we keep our plants growing in CO2 and good lighting to help them adapt better to being grown submerged before being shipped to our customers. You can read more about how we do that here.

We try to be as upfront as possible when it comes to how our plants are grown or kept, and try our hardest to deliver the best quality plants and livestock to our customers. We strive to outperform our competitors in terms of providing our customers with great customer service and always being there to help our customers thrive in this hobby, especially if they are new and need guidance or recommendations when choosing the right plants or livestock for their aquariums. We love getting to know our customers! We will try to rectify any issues or respond to any messages as soon as we can as we understand how frustrating it can be to have to wait days in order to get a reply from a business. 

We also believe in supporting Small Businesses, as Small Businesses are the backbone of the American economy. Feel free to help support other small businesses in the fish-keeping hobby here!

We're always open to new collaborations so feel free to contact us if you are interested in collaborating!