They laughed at 100,000 readers a month.
Six years later, we reached 3.5 million a month.
I kept fish as a hobby. In 2005, I turned that hobby into a one-man side business installing and maintaining aquariums around Tokyo, and built a website for it myself. The inquiries didn't stop coming, so I quit my trading-company job, went independent, and incorporated Tokyo Aqua Garden the following year.
Twenty years later, our aquarists have designed and installed more than 5,000 aquariums in offices, clinics, restaurants and homes, including the Mauritius Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka. A team of 20 keeps hundreds of client tanks healthy on maintenance rounds across Tokyo, every working day.
From the beginning, we published everything we knew. The techniques our aquarists used on their rounds, the failures and the fixes were written up and given away for free, in Japanese. We have never had a sales team. People read what we know, and some of them call us. That has been the entire business model for twenty years.
In 2017, I launched a hobbyist magazine site and declared a goal: 100,000 pageviews a month. Industry people laughed at me. The market was mature, the big sites were already established, and nobody knew who I was. I understood why they laughed. I just didn't agree.
Now we are starting from zero again, in a language that isn't ours and a market where nobody knows us yet. This site is where twenty years of our working knowledge becomes English, adapted for American water, fish and stores, with illustrations by our staff painter and photos from our own tanks.
No ads clutter these pages, and none will until the site earns real readers. Our maintenance business in Tokyo pays the bills. We just hope it helps your fish thrive, and that you remember where you read it.
— Motoki TotsugiFounder & Editor-in-Chief, Tokyo Aqua Garden Co., Ltd. · Tokyo, Japan
Who makes this site
Started Tokyo Aqua Garden in 2005 after a fish hobby outgrew his apartment, and incorporated it in 2006. Editorial responsibility for every guide on this site rests with him.
Art-school-trained painter with years of fishkeeping experience of her own. Every illustration on this site, including all 35 medaka variety watercolors, is drawn by her hand.
Aqua Garden Bldg., 3-2-7 Itabashi, Itabashi-ku, Tokyo 173-0004, Japan · Founded 2005 · Incorporated 2006 · 20 employees (including part-time)
Japanese sites: t-aquagarden.com (aquarium rental & maintenance) · tropica.jp (our aquarium magazine; no relation to Tropica Aquarium Plants of Denmark)