Our History In Manufacturing Aquariums

Meet Adam’s Specialty Products, LLC

Adam’s Specialty Products, LLC (the parent company of Custom Aquariums, Custom Cages, Serenity Aquarium and Aviary Services, and Vision Products) was founded in a modest college apartment basement and incorporated in 1998. Why? During this time, “Crocodile Hunter” was famous on TV, so having iguanas, bearded dragons, snakes, and other reptiles as pets was a fast-growing trend. Thus, a childhood hobby turned into a full-time college student’s entrepreneurship.

During the internet’s infancy, we were among the first to have a website offering high-quality reptile cages that were large enough for these pets to live comfortably. Through that simple website, all products were sold, hand-built, and then shipped one at a time, ready for on-site assembly. Our innovative designs launched us to the forefront of the reptile enclosures industry.

From the start, we’ve been a build-to-order company selling directly to end consumers. Because of that direct interaction, we’re constantly learning from feedback to improve and create unique, high-quality products. As a result, over the next 20+ years, we became the number one custom pet enclosure manufacturer in the USA, selling thousands of high-end custom units worldwide annually.

Now, we have over 35 patents and 50,000 square feet of manufacturing space, including our full-fledged woodworking shop and top-tier glass fabrication facility with better equipment than most local glass and cabinet manufacturers. We also employ full-time expert engineers, managers, technicians, welders, and artisans, who meticulously craft each enclosure, stand, and canopy by hand. Therefore, our in-house capabilities are genuinely second to none.

Our Motto

“We don’t just make products; we solve problems!”

Our Mission

We build the highest‐quality products that last a lifetime while innovating products that solve the pet industry’s problems and maintaining a reliable end‐to‐end customer service experience.

Custom Aquariums Beginnings

Custom Aquariums naturally branched from Custom Cages underneath Adam’s Specialty Products, LLC early on. Eventually, both became premier brands in the industry. Years of experimenting, listening to customer needs, and countless engineering hours also brought innovations like the Friendly Feeder®, H2Overflow®, Stealthbox®, Seamless Sump®, Siphon Stopper®, and many others.

A relentless commitment to quality, customer service, and constant innovation has allowed the company to flourish to over 50 employees (and growing!). Although we now have over 50,000sf of state-of-the-art equipment and a team of well-trained expert staff, the principles remain the same. Every unit is built one at a time by our proud and expert craftsman, custom-built for your needs.

We have sold units to every significant Zoo and many high-profile clients. In addition, we have been featured on various TV shows and news articles. To see more, check out our In The News section below.

Through our experience in the pet enclosure manufacturing industry, it was a natural fit for us to do aviary and aquarium services as well, not only to expand our business but also to continually stay in touch with our customers’ needs. Thus, Serenity Aquarium and Aviary Services (SerenityUSA.com) was born. Currently, the service division of our business services hundreds of ongoing accounts all over the country and employs dozens of professional service technicians. Some of them have 25+ years of individual experience servicing and maintaining aquariums and aviaries, and some are among the most well-known experts in the industry regarding the care and maintenance of aquariums.

Through our experience creating a low-hassle, low-maintenance service and our attention to detail, we soon discovered that many of the commercially available aquarium products on the market are not engineered for a reliable, long-term customer satisfaction experience. Tanks would look sloppy over time, parts would wear out, and maintenance was not as simple as it could be. We found that most products on the market were built to be cheap, have high long-term consumables costs, and wear out. We knew we could do better.

Our Customized Aquarium Design

Our sister company Serenity Aquarium Services is responsible for maintaining the equipment and the health of the fish in aquariums around the US. They do not charge the customer extra when something goes wrong; they fix and replace it for free as a part of the service and commitment to quality. This model has put our interests in line with our customer’s interests, where we want to create the lowest cost, lowest required maintenance, highest appeal, and longest-lasting systems possible. Our experience with other products on the market showed us that most of the other products available are designed to get you to spend more and more money on consumables and replacement parts over time, not to last for decades.

Because of the need for a more robust, versatile, and reliable aquarium system, we went to work. We spent many years, hundreds of hours of engineering and prototyping, designed, tested, and re-designed a unique array of the best problem-solving products available on the market today with over 30 patents and climbing. You will not find products like ours anywhere else.

Whether it is a complete setup you are looking for or just a few components to complete your DIY setup, we welcome all ideas and input, and we can be there to help you achieve your design. At our core, we are DIY (do it yourself) hobbyists who started in a small apartment building our units one at a time. Now, we are still the same DIY hobbyists, just with a lot more experience and at a bigger scale. We build, stock, and maintain hundreds of aquariums every day and understand the needs of not only the high-end maintenance accounts but also the average enthusiast trying to make a custom setup that you can be proud of and call your own.

This invaluable experience not only in the manufacturing business but also in the service and maintenance business has led us to develop our patented systems: the Lifetime Aquariums® build-to-order glass aquarium system, the Seamless Sump® filtration system, the H2Overflow® aquarium overflow system, the Siphon Stopper® return fitting, and the Majestic® stands and canopies. Every time we found an unmet problem, we set out to solve it in a simple, elegant, practical way. We don’t simply copy all the other products that have been the same thing for years and years; we solve problems with our designs.

None of our systems is a one size fits all approach. Depending on every unique circumstance, we can build many sizes, shapes, and configurations with our systems. However, when we finished designing, re-designing, testing, and perfecting these systems for our service business, they were too good not to share with everyone else. Thus, CustomAquariums.com was born to sell our products to other end-user customers and other service companies outside of our own. Now, you can have the same high-quality, best-in-class aquarium systems in your own home or office that we use every day in our high-end commercial aquarium service business.

In The News

We have sold units to every significant Zoo (including the San Diego Zoo, the Columbus Zoo, Bush Gardens, Sea World, and Six Flags Animal Kingdom), as well as many high-profile clients (including A-list actors/actresses, Hollywood producers, NFL/NHL/NBA/MLB athletes, prizefighting champions).

We were featured on ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” twice, MTV’s “Pimp My Ride,” Bravo’s “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” Fox’s “Renovate My Family,” the small business edition of Business Week, and a segment on MSNBC that touted our “Made in the USA” approach, to name a few.

In addition, we designed and set up the showroom for Jack Hanna at the Columbus Zoo, where he houses many of the animals you see on television regularly. We achieved all of these without paid endorsements. Instead, they all came to us for our one-of-a-kind, high-quality products.