Hello everyone!!
I wanted to introduce myself and my premium blend of aquarium foods made with ingredients sourced from the Carolina coast. But first, I wanted to say that I grew up in West Chester, PA and spent a lot of time in the Delaware Valley, even attending West Chester University to obtain a B.S Degree in Criminal Justice. After two years as a Chester County Deputy Sheriff, we relocated to a small farm in NC to enjoy a little more open space. Since our food business has gone viral, I have just resigned from a ten year career as a patrol officer in a city of 350,000 people.
So let me tell you a little about our company…
We have grown from a small start up business making food for two local reef stores in our home town, to currently shipping hundreds of packs each week of our frozen food all over the country.
We have expanded our reach through club group buys and mailing samples to various aquarium stores. Our last exposure to the Atlanta Reef Club gained us 8+ stores in GA in two weeks…all from just sampling our fresh food blends. We also have the large online retailer, “Premium Aquatics” stocking our blends. PBJ!
We recently did a group buy underway in Richmond, VA and here are the comments from a first time user…
“This stuff rocks! My fish go nuts for it. Every one comes out to eat. I am sold and will be the only stuff I order going forward. I still have cubes of store bought stuff and tested this in two containers. Reef frenzy in one and store bought cubes in the other. All I could see in the reef frenzy was food in the water. That’s it the water was crystal clear but the store bought cube’s water was murky and soupy looking. I’m not one to waste money so I won’t was the store bought stuff but now instead of four cubes daily I feed one mixed with the reef frenzy. Thank you Larry!!!”
The whole 38 post thread is posted here…Reef Frenzy Feedback
I hope to have someone organize a group buy for this club so you all can try some great food at a discounted price. Hopefully, a store or two will catch on as well and carry it in the future. ( For stores reading this…I have tons of business references if required, and promise your customers will love it!!! We can ship via 2 day ground with dry ice and have aggressive promotions to make it very affordable to ship.)
We are now a full time food production company which built our foundation on solid relationships with our stores, and listening to the needs of our customer base.
You can skip the long narrative below and simply view our products and ingredients here:LRS PREMIUM REEF FOODS
Here is a link to a simple comparison chart of our foods side-by-side:
http://www.larrysreefservices.com/uploads/LRS_FOODS_FEEDING_FLYER.pdf
There are plenty of testimonials and photos of our ingredients posted on our website… www.ReefFrenzy.com
If you care to learn how our products got fast tracked to 50+ stores please read this lengthy biography… :SURRENDER
Also, keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming “Product Spotlight” to be published in Tropical Fish Hobbyist Magazine this year!
I live with my son and wife of 20 years on a small farm in Davie County, NC with a few horses and other critters. We got bit bad by the Reefing “Bug” a couple years ago and we currently have over 600 gallons of aquariums in our home. I am very OCD and due to my attention to detail, the local fish store entrusted me to do service work for their clients on my days off from patrol. So, I formed an LLC, bought insurance, and began to install tanks, help with newbie problems, and basically field calls from his 400 or so customer base. I studied everything “Reefing” and had the benefit to speak freely with a published Marine Biologist that lives nearby. During this period I flew to LA with the LFS owner for a week and toured the facilities where a lot of the fish we buy are housed prior to shipping. I also saw how stressed and malnourished these fish are. They are often deliberately not fed to avoid production of ammonia in the shipping bag to the LFS.
Soon after this my wife started to get tired of 15 packs of food in the freezer, even though SHE is the reason we have so many tanks. She loves every fish in the ocean, and thinks she can have them all …
I was sick and tired of spending a half hour a night to feed all our various Reef and FOWLR tanks.
So I began a quest to develop a “cleaner” (than store bought “cuisines”) less mushy food that would let me feed easier and reduce the expense and volume of food in the freezer. I studied almost everything published on marine nutrition, and also “googled” everything online regarding DIY foods and essential nutrition. (Police work is often very boring so I had a lot of time to read.)
What a lot of folks don’t realize is that there is a big difference between a fish living and a fish thriving because they are getting a balanced and varied diet of marine organisms.
So before I bore everyone to death…where’s the good stuff about the food!
I began to purchase wholesale seafood from the Carolina Coast last May and started to mix, rinse, shred, and blend 20+ some ingredients. We peeled hundreds of pounds of fresh caught shrimp, fillet perch, cleaned squid, strained scallops, shucked oysters, etc. With the help of the same LFS we packaged one ounce samples and gave out HUNDREDS of them with my business card and told people to email comments GOOD AND BAD. The response was overwhelming so, I thought “I may be on to something.” I then sought PhD advice on our blend’s ratio of proteins and fats and had it lab tested and approved by the NC Dept. of Agriculture and Commerce. The lab results are posted on our website.
Our first blend was not perfect, it was a little “mushy” and had too much spirulina.
But we kept blending, rinsing and LEARNING how to create the cleanest, most diverse food out there. You may ask, “What does a cop know about fish food?” I humbly submit that I am not a biologist, but I spoke with several and read, and read and read. The bottom line is I DIDN’T INVENT ANYTHING…I simply took all the stuff in your freezer and put into a FRESHER single package…that’s it!!!
I created CONVENIENCE…and BINGO thats what it seems the reef keeping world wants because we are shipping hundreds of packs a week, every week.
Soon word got out via our local forum, Carolina Fish Talk, and we started giving out samples to moderators of other sites, reef clubs and other stores. The posts that were placed online can be viewed on our Testimonials and the demand for the food exploded. You HAVE To read those for a good laugh…I mean people said our food allowed them to heal sick fish, it made them less scared… and they wrote their fish ate out of their hands. I can’t make that stuff up…its posted on Carolina Fish Talk and Reef Sanctuary by the author, I simply cut and pasted it to my site.
The rest they say is history…
Since our original blend we released a perfect Omnivore/Carnivore blend with the same basic seafood ingredients found in all our blends, and it is named “Fish Frenzy.” This December we released the “HERBIVORE FRENZY” food which is unlike ANYTHING in the market today. Picture soaking green/purple Nori and sea lettuce in SELCO and Garlic Dosed RO water and then adding it to the base Omnivore Mixture. When that Nori soaks up that seafood brine while in your freezer, your fish go nuts and you can forget about that silly algae clip.
We literally went from mixing food in a five gallon bucket in our kitchen last June to having a 100% food grade stainless steel processing facility. All utensils are sterile and your food never goes more than 15 feet from the ice packed seafood delivery box to final flash freezing HOBART $3,000 freezer. We have applied for REEF FRENZY to be our Federal Trademark and are currently working with a chemist in the development of food additives and delivery methods to improve fish health.
We are proud to sponsor many web forums and have stocking dealers from FL to MA. Coralgasm.com is a great customer of ours who distributes our food to their service customers, and feeds it to their propagation tanks.
I hope some of you browse our website at LRS PREMIUM REEF FOODS
I created the website and take pride that all the photos are of our livestock. I also personally oversee the filling, and processing of every single pack of food sold. My son and wife assist in applying the labels to the USDA Food Grade 4 Mil Poly bags, and our operation is a labor of love and family business. We pride ourself on being “small time”, and not selling out to automated equipment which sacrifices quality. We can crank out several hundred packs of food in under 4 hours, all while keeping your food ingredients below 50 degrees and in a sterile environment.
Just as I have devoted my life to public service, I would do anything I can for a fellow hobbyist to aid getting your fish to eat, be vibrant and remain healthy.
We just returned from the SC Aquaria Trade show where I was a guest speaker on Marine Nutrition and enriched foods.
Thanks for reading all this…I thank you for your support as we truly are a family owned business as well as devoted hobbyists.
Here is a picture thread showing some of my tanks:
http://delreefclub.org/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=28&topic=7029.msg66330#msg66330
Please “LIKE” us on Facebook and sign up for our newsletter, since we are trying to build up our followers on both.
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/LarrysReefServices
Larry DuPont
Owner
LRS FOODS, LLC
Here is my son being a salesman and a cool youtube video link below that you won’t want to miss of a local reef tank!
Seth’s Amazing Reef Tank - YouTube
This is your “brain” on Reef Frenzy!!!
