FREE SHIPPING and TISBES!?

#1
Hi Everyone!

First off, we just want to thank everyone in the community for such great support in helping the development of AlgaeBarn, as both a local company and a startup. Because of this great support we are now able to offer FREE SHIPPING with a purchase of $29.98 or more. This equates to:

  • x1 bottle of copepods ($29.99) or
  • x2 bottles of our OceanMagik phytoplankton blend ($14.99 each)

Also, TISBES will be available starting with this next weeks orders! More information will be coming out in a few days and along with website updates, such as faster speeds, a new layout, product updates, and VIDEOS! We are very excited about these videos as we can finally show you the densities of these pods. There are so many!

Please PM me with any questions and feedback is encouraged. In fact, lets open up this thread! Whoever is able to provide the most valuable piece of feedback on "how we can better serve the club community" by now and next Wednesday at 12pm midnight, will receive a free bottle of phyto and Tisbe on Friday shipped to them for FREE! Also, please vote for your favorite feedback as well.
Cheers to YOU!


Post, pm or visit www.AlgaeBarn.com to order!
 
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#2
We will be posting a video showcasing the densities of copepods in the next couple of days. While we will try and obtain an accurate measurement, we think the video should suffice. The most posts, the quicker I'll post the video.
 

Andrew_bram

Tiger Shark
M.A.S.C Club Member
#3
I personally would like a more diverse pod product. I would like I hodge podge of different Copepoda and amphipods.
 

SkyShark

Dolphin
M.A.S.C Club Member
#4
Free shipping at a low price point like that is great.
Have you guys approached any of the local shops about carrying your products? I find it is a lot easier for me to pick up something like this on impulse. Also, this way there wouldn't be any wonder about how it will look when it arrives in the mail.
 

sethsolomon

Hammerhead Shark
M.A.S.C Club Member
#5
SkyShark;270818 said:
Free shipping at a low price point like that is great.
Have you guys approached any of the local shops about carrying your products? I find it is a lot easier for me to pick up something like this on impulse. Also, this way there wouldn't be any wonder about how it will look when it arrives in the mail.
The problem is shelf life. the average shelf life of live phyto is about 1-2 weeks. Schuyler please correct me if I am wrong. So its hard for companies to sit on the product. But I think Schuyler mentioned something about a possible subscription thing at reef ed?
 

ReefCheif

Reef Shark
M.A.S.C Club Member
Platinum Sponsor
#7
I have to be honest, I dont think theres too much more you could do better for this community. You attend meetings, your moving forward and offering additional savings to the club, I mean what more could we ask for? The obvious things have already been stated, stock locally, more diverse product, but either way I have no complaints.

Maybe host a meeting saometime and let us check out your operation! Ive always been interested in seeing how this type of thing is done and Im sure Im not the only one.
 
#9
Great feedback all.

As far as the question about pet shops, yes, we are in the process of working with our first one! Exotic Aquatics in Boulder will officially be the first store to carry our product in a couple of weeks. Once we are in one pet shop it should be easy to move into another so start requesting our product at your local shops. Eventually we plan to use shops as local distribution hubs where we can deliver product every other week or two weeks to keep it as fresh as possible. Until then, it is overnight shipping every Thurs-Fri... for FREE!

Also, we have found that under the right conditions (refrigerated, red cap off, and shaken often) the product will remain good for up to a month!?

As for the subscription, we are still working on that one...
 
#10
I've had the hardest time uploading these photos. They don't do the bottles justice, but I would estimate 500+ visible copepods per bottle. I'll be editing the post to add the photos
 

SLewis

Clown Fish
M.A.S.C Club Member
#12
I was thinking about your videos that you said you were going to upload. were they to show the density of the bottles or what?

I would enjoy a video based on your experience showing the steps to "seed" a tank and general instructions video. looking up pods on youtube is kinda lame as the videos are lacking. Maybe a Q and A video as well that way people can understand and learn from you when they buy your product. Plus i personally would feel happier buying pods from someone who teaches me about pods than just anywhere. the few time i have asked locally i usually get vague general responses about pods and their benefits. so if you had educational videos (i get tired of reading 700000000 pages on pods) i would watch them. and think it would help draw people to you as well
 
#13
The winner was SkyShark. Schuyler has talked to him and his package will be shipped next week.

Great advice and tips everyone. Let me get around to answering everyones comments.

Andrew: This hobby is all about biodiversity which is why we are currently culturing three strains of copepods. We are doing individual strains at the moment so that we can determine how best to culture each one and then we can combine them into a single product in the future. This ensures that when you do purchase a copepod pack, that you are getting the biodiversity that you expect. If you try to culture a variety of copepods in a single container, then eventually, you will reach an equilibrium between several strains of copepods. These copepods may be well suited for the culture container, but they may be not suited for a marine aquarium. By culturing individual strains of copepods that we have confirmed will reproduce in a marine aquarium, we can give each strain a sufficient chance at becoming a main specie in the aquarium.

SkyShark: Congradulations on winning the prize. We are in contact with a local Boulder fish store and we will be getting things stocked before the end of the month!! But yes, people want to see what they are going to buy before they buy it.

Seth: Shelf life for our live food will be tricky, but since we are concentrating in Colorado, we will be able to do product switchouts in stores to ensure that the product quality does not deteriorate below our high standards. Tigriopus copepods will last over a month in a fridge. The phytoplankton maintains optimal health for one month with shakings. We are still determining Tisbe shelf life, but it is not nearly as long as the Tigriopus. It is likely due to oxygen deprivation. Keep a look out for the subscription service.

Andrew: We enjoy going to the meetings and making new friends :)

ReefChief: That is really great to hear Josh. We keep trying to ensure that we have the best product on the market. Our OceanMagik has more strains of phytoplankton than most, if not all, of the corporate dead phytoplankton blends. We are trying to bring more pods to the table, but we haven't had too much luck in the past buying a ton of new strains and trying to set them up at once. They all require different culture conditions and different amounts of love. We are considering setting up some sort of meeting, the lab is a rather cool place to see and we are trying to set up a 20L paired mandarin tank to prove how effective our OceanMagik phytoplankton is at elevating copepod levels. The problem lies with some of the technology we are using, some of it is proprietary and it would be a pain to "keep our advantage" hidden.


Ghxst: Great to here Bill. We bottle our OceanMagik with the utmost care to ensure that the product will stay viable for the longest time possible. We list a "best by this date" as to give a low estimate of the shelf life.


SLewis: Great post! We wish you would have made the Wednesday Midnight deadline. The videos were to show density. It is quite hard without a macro lens, but if you see the product in person, it will be an easy decision. That is a great suggestion on making videos on how to seed a tank. We will be setting up a mandarin tank at the AlgaeBarn labs in the very near future (we have the tanks, just got the glass drill bits in the mail today, so it will be very soon!) so we will be able to show people how to seed their tank and how best to maintain a ridiculous copepod population without having the tank overrun with nuisance algae. Educational videos about pods would be an excellent idea. We will try to explain how each specie of copepod we sell is different and their individual benefits, likes and dislikes, etc.

Schuyler and I are talking about a prize to give to everyone for participating as we really appreciate the input.

And that video I promised.....

[video=youtube;4JbkpzNI8Ag]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JbkpzNI8Ag[/video] We have approximately 2000+ copepods in each bottle.
 

Fitz19d

Bat Fish
M.A.S.C Club Member
#14
I havn't followed every thread. I knew a while back it was asked. What about local pickups? Any possibility of that? As a small business I'm sure the saved overhead on overnight shipping would be good. Maybe even knocks a few bucks off the consumer price.
 

SLewis

Clown Fish
M.A.S.C Club Member
#15
ya i didn't see your post till yesterday morning but i thought i would offer my feedback even after the deadline. because i think it would be extremely valuable to your business and to your customers.
 

fishguy69

Dolphin
M.A.S.C Club Member
#16
We may start caring these guys products for the North folks!!! Coming soon.
 
#17
Hi All,

Thank you all for such great feedback. This truly is a very lively and supportive community to be apart of. Sorry it took me so long to get back on and post the winner, had a few things come up yesterday and was not able to hop online.

As Sean has mentioned, SkyShark was the winner. His honestly about impulse buying of these types of products made a really good point. Instead of an impulse purchase product, we would like to make our product as quality as possible so that it becomes a routine part of your tanks natural feeding schedule.

And SLewis, a close second, although over time.

Fitz19d: instead of offering pickups, we have decided to offer free shipping of any order $30+ which would either be 1 bottle copepods or 2 bottles of OceanMagik

As a way to reward you all for your great response, Sean and I will be giving each of you a $5 coupon code for any of our products. Currently our website is down due to maintenance so you can pm me if anyone wants an order, once the website goes back up, we will have a coupon code pm'd out.

Cheers!
 
#18
To everyone that offered advice(SLewis included), please make an account at https://www.algaebarn.com/ and we will credit your account with a $5 gift certificate for our store!
 

SLewis

Clown Fish
M.A.S.C Club Member
#19
im getting some heavy syntax and sql errors on your website atm, cant do antything on your website
 
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