Hi, my name is Scott Bielecky, President of Tropical FantaSeas Enterprises, Inc. Along with my wife Katie, we are the proud owners of Tropical FantaSeas Aquarium Store and Service. I would like to take a minute and tell you a little about myself and how our company was founded.
Having been born in West Palm Beach and being a life long resident, it is probably not surprising that I was swimming in the ocean at a very young age. It was about age six that I first donned a mask and plunged over the edge of the reef along the shoreline at Lake Worth Beach. That was my first experience with the fascination of the underwater world. It seemed like a fantasea at the time, and to this day, every time I dive on a reef I feel like I am in a fantasea world. My first aquarium came about age seven. I had captured my initial specimen, a blenny that popped out of a sunken beer bottle. Only then was I able to convince my parents that I had to have an aquarium to house my prize. By age twelve, I had mastered the art of catching tropical fish with nets, and spent many summers doing just that. By this time, I had five aquariums in my bedroom, and was actually attempting to duplicate (with a surprising degree of success), the Lee Chen natural method of keeping live rock and corals.
Riding a bicycle from Lake Worth to Palm Beach and then walking 5 miles up the beach with all my dive gear so that I could swim back with the current was never a deterrent to keeping me from doing what I loved. By age 14 I was a certified scuba diver and truly living out my fanatsea by scuba diving on reefs that I had been fishing on with Dad since I was old enough to hold a fishing pole. At age 18, I entered the Fire Service and, in between going to school to become a firefighter/paramedic, I bought my first boat. It was a 1970, 20 ft. SeaCraft, and I soon became a commercial tropical fish collector when I was off duty.
It was as a tropical fish collector that I developed a deep appreciation for the intricacies of the fish, invertebrates, and corals that I was privileged enough to be able to observe in their natural environment. I quickly learned how to handle these delicate specimens from the time they are caught, sometimes in over 100 ft. of water, (from this depth, fish need to have air released from their air bladder with a hypodermic needle so they don’t blow up from the change in pressure on the way up), to placing them in special containers with the proper oxygenation to ensure their survival back to my holding tanks. All of this translated into a greater understanding and a more scientific approach to keeping fish, invertebrates, and corals in captivity.
Because while we all know that there is only a finite number of living organisms that we can take from the sea, I believe it is essential to keep aquariums not only to appreciate the beauty of the world beneath us, but to help educate ourselves and our children to the importance of understanding the delicate balance of nature and man that the microcosm of a living reef aquarium brings.
With my passion and experience in marine life systems, integrated with an educational background that includes a B.B.A. and M.P.A., and over 25 years of public service as a Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue Lieutenant, I felt that I could create a business that includes a combination of necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities to not only provide customers with quality and dependable service, but just as importantly to help educate customers on creating and maintaining a harmonious balance in the aquarium that most closely resembles a natural reef habitat, thereby increasing the vitality and longevity of the inhabitants.
Scott A. Bielecky
