A Henrico aquarium business that started out of a single service van two years ago has now planted its flag in a storefront on West Broad Street, where it's selling custom saltwater tanks that can run as high as $180,000. Kole Tang Aquatics opened its 1,600-square-foot retail shop at 7250 W. Broad St., a building that has cycled through lives as a car dealership and, before that, a Subway sandwich shop.
The new location caps a buildout that owner Kole Elkin described as expensive and involving ground-up reconstruction, according to Richmond BizSense. Elkin declined to detail the cost of the renovation. Kole Tang Aquatics leases the building from an LLC tied to Elkin's parents, and the retail concept had been in development for a little over a year before its doors opened.
From a Single Van to a Storefront Built for Growth
Elkin launched Kole Tang as a van-based operation in 2024, and the retail shop is a bet on a different strategy for building the company's core business: aquarium maintenance and installation. Elkin told the outlet that a successful maintenance business needs a storefront where customers can sit down and talk through their aquarium plans face to face. The shop now sells saltwater and freshwater fish, coral, aquariums, lights and filters, and serves as the meeting point for a servicing operation that maintains tanks for more than 70 clients.
That servicing business is already running at capacity. The company operates with one van, averages eight to 12 jobs every day of the week, and plans to add a second van soon, with an eventual fleet goal of seven to 10 vehicles. Kole Tang currently has two employees, and Elkin plans to expand the team as the business grows.
Before the storefront existed, Kole Tang built its early client base on urgency. In its original mobile-only phase in 2024, the company charged $250 an hour for emergency repair visits to patch leaks or cracks threatening to wipe out an aquarium's fish population, since, as Elkin noted at the time, an owner could lose an entire aquatic ecosystem within 45 minutes of a major leak if repairs weren't made immediately, per Richmond BizSense's earlier reporting. The company also charged a 75-cent-per-mile travel fee for service calls more than 15 miles outside Henrico as it initially targeted statewide service across Virginia from its home base.
Pricing for Tanks Big and Small
Kole Tang Aquatics now focuses its service area within a 60-mile radius of the western Henrico store, though it will travel farther for the right job or an emergency call where fish are in danger. Service visits run $165 for tanks between 220 and 325 gallons and $125 for anything smaller, while saltwater to fill a tank sells for $1.50 a gallon. The shop primarily services saltwater setups.
On the retail side, the custom aquariums come from manufacturer Glass Cages, which built the tanks now on display in the store. Prices vary by tank, but the business has sold custom builds costing as much as $180,000 and moved more than 70 custom tanks this year alone, according to the BizSense report.
A Growing Market for High-End Tanks
The surge in big-ticket custom builds tracks with broader shifts in pet ownership nationally. According to 2025 survey data from the American Pet Products Association, 43% of saltwater aquarium owners invested in a custom-built tank last year, a nearly 20% jump from the year before, with the group's research pointing to aquarium owners increasingly treating custom tanks as wellness-focused interior design elements. The association also found that millennials make up 46% of all saltwater fish owners in the country, positioning them as the demographic most driving demand for design-forward, tech-enabled setups.
Saltwater fishkeeping remains a much smaller niche than its freshwater counterpart. The association's research puts the number of U.S. households with saltwater fish at roughly 2 million, compared with 10 million freshwater households, reflecting the higher financial investment and specialized equipment that saltwater setups typically demand.
The Fish Behind the Name
The business takes its name from both Elkin and the yellow eye kole tang, a fish native to Hawaiian waters. Before launching the van operation, Elkin had been a partner in another saltwater aquarium store in Henrico County, Reefology, and worked for national pet retailer Petco; he grew up in Mechanicsville and got his start in fishkeeping as a kid with a makeshift kiddie-pool aquarium, per Richmond BizSense's prior coverage.
The kole tang's popularity among reef hobbyists stems from its bristle-like teeth, which scrape film algae off rocks, according to Reef Builders. But sourcing the wild fish commercially has become legally fraught. Commercial reef fish collecting in Hawaii was suspended in 2017 pending state environmental impact studies, and a 2026 bill that sought to ban commercial aquarium fishing off Oahu stalled after years of legal battles and Supreme Court reviews, as reported by Courthouse News Service. Proposed environmental management limits could theoretically allow 30,000 permits for kole tangs to be issued per year.
A Focus on Customer Care
Elkin has described himself and his team as passionate aquarium hobbyists who want to provide tailored, one-on-one customer experiences. He said the company's goal is to teach customers how to properly care for their own aquariums, since, as he put it, fish and corals cannot speak for themselves.
