After a devastating fire ripped through Salt Aquariums in December last year, the Emu Plains store is refurbished and ready for business.
In the early hours of December 6, 2013, a fire started in the store’s air-conditioning system and while the building itself survived, the roof panels, shop fit and all the stock was destroyed, mostly from soot and smoke damage.
“I was down in Melbourne when the fire happened so I came back up the following day and when I got in it was quite horrific. All you could see was soot everywhere and dead coral,” Salt Aquariums owner, Craig Salt said.
Striking just before the Christmas season, it wasn’t until February that the building was assessed by the insurance company. The store was then gutted and what followed was many months of hard work to get Salt Aquariums back to new again.
It was a process that was definitely worth the wait for Mr Salt.
“It’s great coming back into it and seeing all the coral again and the fish, it’s good to be back” he said.
The store is owned by husband and wife team Craig and Sharon Salt. The couple opened the store in 2008 after Mr Salt’s hobby started to get a bit too big for their home.
“I remember wanting to get a bigger tank and my wife said to me ‘no, you can’t get a bigger tank, you can’t fit it in here’ and she said ‘why don’t you just buy a shop?’ and I said ‘OK’, so we started the shop,” he said.
The couple are hoping customers will return and check out the newly refurbished store, which is situated on Old Bathurst Road, Emu Plains. The new fit out includes bigger tanks, more live coral and a newly painted mural.
