We Don’t Just Write
About Aquariums.
We Live Them.
Aquarium Extravaganza started with a bad tank, a dead fish, and a Friday night with nowhere better to be. Seven years later, we’re still obsessing so you don’t have to.
Where It All Started
A $40 Starter Kit and a Lot of Dead Plants
“The fish survived. The gravel didn’t match. I needed better advice than whatever PetSmart had on a laminated card.”
It started in the winter of 2019. Marcus Webb, a software developer from Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, bought a 10-gallon starter kit from a big-box pet store on a whim. The fish lived. The cycling process did not go smoothly. The plants melted. The water turned green within two weeks.
What followed was a deep, obsessive rabbit hole: forums, YouTube videos, out-of-print fishkeeping books from the 1970s, and more Amazon tabs open simultaneously than his laptop could handle. After months of research, his tank looked incredible. But the process had been unnecessarily hard.
That spring, Marcus called his college friend Daniel Park — a marine biology dropout turned food blogger living in Wicker Park — and said three words: “I have an idea.”
Aquarium Extravaganza went live in August 2019 with four articles and a tank photo that Marcus took on his kitchen floor. It has not stopped growing since.
The Journey
How We Got Here
August 2019
The Site Goes Live
Marcus publishes the first four articles from his apartment in Logan Square. Traffic for the first month: 312 visitors, 11 of whom were probably his mom. The first guide — “Why Your New Tank Water Looks Like Pea Soup” — still ranks on page one of Google to this day.
March 2020
Daniel Joins Full-Time
The world locked down. Daniel, whose restaurant column had gone quiet overnight, moved back to Chicago and threw himself into the site. Within ninety days, monthly traffic hit 40,000. Daniel’s writing voice — warm, slightly sarcastic, never condescending — became the backbone of what Aquarium Extravaganza sounds like today.
January 2021
The First $0 Product Review
A major aquarium brand offered to send free equipment in exchange for a guaranteed positive review. Marcus declined. He bought the product himself, tested it for six weeks, and published a scathing three-thousand-word takedown. Reader emails poured in. Trust, it turned out, is worth more than a free canister filter.
September 2022
Sofia and James Join the Team
Sofia Reyes, a Chicago Aquarium volunteer and planted tank specialist, came on to run the freshwater content vertical. James Okoro, a reef hobbyist and high school science teacher from Evanston, took over saltwater.
2024 – Present
Still Independent, Still Honest
Three acquisition offers. Three polite rejections. Aquarium Extravaganza remains fully independent, self-funded through affiliate revenue and a small display ad program. Every word on this site is written by someone who keeps fish. That will never change.
The People
Who’s Behind the Glass
Marcus Webb
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
The original bad-tank guy. Marcus handles site strategy, equipment reviews, and the kind of long-form guides that take six weeks to write. He has a 75-gallon South American biotope in his living room that his partner calls “the roommate I never agreed to.”
75-gal SA Biotope
Daniel Park
Managing Editor & Head Writer
Former food critic, current fish obsessive. Daniel is responsible for most of what you’d call “the voice” of this site — clear, direct, and refusing to talk down to beginners or insult experienced hobbyists. He keeps six tanks simultaneously and claims this is “not a problem.”
6 tanks (it’s fine)
Sofia Reyes
Freshwater & Planted Tank Lead
Sofia spent four years volunteering at the Shedd Aquarium before joining us. Her planted tank guides are the most-read content on the site. She is the only person on the team who actually understands CO2 diffusion ratios intuitively.
High-tech planted 60P
James Okoro
Saltwater & Reef Specialist
High school biology teacher by day, reef keeper by night. James brings a rare combination of scientific rigor and genuine accessibility to saltwater content. His “Reef for Real People” series introduced thousands of readers to marine fishkeeping.
120-gal mixed reef
What We Stand For
The Rules We Don’t Break
No Paid Reviews. Ever.
Brands cannot pay for favorable coverage. We buy what we test, or we decline to test it. If a company sends us something unsolicited, we disclose it and review it exactly as we would anything else.
Fish Welfare Is Non-Negotiable
We will never recommend an undersized tank, a harmful product, or a practice that shortens a fish’s life just because it’s popular. If the hobby norm is wrong, we say so — even when it’s unpopular.
We Test Before We Write
Every equipment review involves actual water, actual fish, and at minimum four to eight weeks of real-world use. Opinions based on product photos and spec sheets are useless.
Plain Language, Always
We write for the person who just bought their first tank, and for the person who has kept fish for thirty years. Nobody should need a biology degree to understand our guides.
We Actually Respond
Got a question? Email us. A real person on the team answers — not an auto-reply, not a chatbot — usually within 48 hours.
We Update When We’re Wrong
When we publish something that later turns out to be inaccurate, we correct it publicly, update the article, and note the change. No quiet edits, no pretending it didn’t happen.
Home Base
Chicago Made Us Who We Are
There’s something fitting about building an aquarium site in a city that sits on the edge of one of the largest freshwater systems on Earth. Lake Michigan is a constant reminder of what water looks like at scale — and how much it matters.
Our team is spread across the North Side neighborhoods we grew up in: Logan Square, Wicker Park, Evanston, Andersonville. We meet at a dive bar in Roscoe Village once a month to argue about filtration and eat too many wings.
Being Chicago-based also means we’re close to the Shedd Aquarium — one of the finest public aquariums in North America — and to a community of hardcore hobbyists who take their tanks as seriously as we do.
Chicago
Illinois, USA
- Headquarters in Logan Square, Chicago’s North Side
- Team members in Logan Square, Wicker Park & Evanston
- Minutes from the Shedd Aquarium on Lake Michigan
- Monthly team meetups since 2020 (mostly punctual)
- Serving hobbyists in all 50 states and 40+ countries
Our Promise
What You Can Count On
“Every article on this site was written by someone who has stood in front of their own tank at 11pm, flashlight in hand, trying to figure out what’s wrong. We write from that place. We always will.”
— Marcus Webb & Daniel Park, Co-Founders
