Shed Aquarium

Old town aquarium. Nice shop

 

I encountered the most incredible private aquarist in one of the suburbs. He had literally his entire basement devoted to tanks. Vietnamese guy with mostly Asian FW fish - some very nice high end Datnoids, Arowanna, Flowerhorns, etc. I'm not sure if you guys keep any FW and even moreso the monster predators of FW but I can try to find his contact info if you're interested. This was back in 2010 when I was there though.

Shedd itself is worth an entire day

 

I second Old Town Aquarium, super nice shop with a lot of rarities...and alot of money. They used to have a gigantic bubble coral, that alone was worth the trip into the store.

 

I actually looked into this a few years ago for school. Shedd uses Instant Ocean. Some coastal aquariums use natural seawater that has been filtered. Some make their own mixes. And some use a variety. At the time that I was looking into it Sea World Orlando used natural seawater for their mammals, large tanks, etc. But they used Instant Ocean in their smaller tanks.

 

I love the shed. We've been there 3 times. I want to goto the Georgia aquariums this summer.

 

The Georgia Aquarium is awesome. Watching them feed the 3 Whale Sharks from a row boat was something I didn't expect to see in Georgia. They usually have 4 Whale Sharks, but at the time I was there one of them had passed away. Also when I was there they must not have fed the first main tank in awhile because 5 minutes into being there a Reef Shark bit a Grouper in half and a bunch of people freaked out.

 

I think IO is a good salt and does exactly what it should it is also one of the more affordable salt mixes. The only reason I don't use it is because it does not dissolve as nicely as Red Sea. If I had a large aquarium and equipment to mix salt water and hold it, I would have no problem using IO.