Columbia Basin couple opens saltwater aquarium business

MOSES LAKE — Jim Montgomery has been surrounded by fish all his life.

"Fish have always been a hobby," he said. "My mother had fish, and as a teenager, we had tropical fish and saltwater fish later. I've kind of been around them pretty much all of my life. It just kind of gyrated this direction, I guess."

It's easy for the fish to maintain a person's interest, Montgomery added.

"It's just been a fascination of the animals themselves. They're such a diverse type and array of animal, they're never-ending. A lot of things, once you figure it out, it's gone. This here, you never get it figured out. You just keep it going."

Montgomery and his wife of four years, Judy, keep both a saltwater and a freshwater aquarium at home.

They opened the business JJ's Reef and Aquarium, located at 101 W. Third Ave., June 16 after several years of discussion.

"Finally, the timing was right," Montgomery said.

The business offers saltwater aquarium and reef supplies, and employs one part-time employee.

"We wanted to open a fish store," Montgomery said. "There's so much competition in the freshwater and it's so limited on what you can get anymore. Saltwater is just so much more diverse, so much more availability of things."

That includes any number of corals, vertebrates and fish, he explained.

"We are the only ones like this in the Columbia Basin," Montgomery said. "There's only a handful of these saltwater stores statewide."

Montgomery has lived in the Columbia Basin since 1980. He moved to Moses Lake from Royal City about four years ago.

The Montgomerys have made no plans to expand to include freshwater aquarium offerings as well.

"I don't know that we have really set goals," Montgomery said. "We want to keep this going. I would like to have this considered as a class operation. I don't want this to turn in to the status a lot of pet shops are. Hopefully, this will be more up class than most pet shops."

He called the response from the community outstanding.

"There's a lot of these saltwater aquariums around Moses Lake, more than I think anyone ever knew," Montgomery said. "I'm getting lots of people coming in here and saying they have a saltwater tank, or their cousin or whoever has one of these tanks."

For more information, contact Montgomery at 509-764-1995.