My Biz: Prairie Creek Aquatics features dozens of types of fish

Surrounded by acres of Benton County corn and soybeans you can find a farm of a different sort.

“This was for retirement,” Bill Ballard said one morning this week. “I had fish pretty much all my life. Since I was a teenager, I always had tanks.”

As Ballard, 66, stayed with the hobby during his “working” years building grain-storage bins, he connected with a loose network of like-minded tropical fish enthusiasts who meet regularly for “fish swaps,” trading and selling their surplus population.

“Nine years ago, I added onto my house and garage and added a fish room,” he said. “That expanded to 40 tanks.”

  Buy Photo

Ballard’s garage hobby became Prairie Creek Aquatics, moving to its present location in 2019. Ballard and Dorothy Knowler, who also worked for his bin-building business, look after dozens of colorful species living in about 180 display tanks and 70 breeding tanks, from simple fish bowls for tiny guppies to a 480-gallon tank that’s home to a few stingrays.

“I always liked fish when I was little, but we never had a lot until this,” said Knowler, 66, nodding toward the softly-bubbling tanks in the warm, humid space.

“We started out just raising fish and going to swaps,” said Ballard. “The main focus was home-raised fish, because so many people buy fish in a store and three weeks later, they’re dead. It’s just the way (stores) handle fish.”

Fish swaps in Des Moines and the Quad Cities remain the foundation of the business. But the shop, also stocked with fish food and aquarium supplies, is open Fridays and Saturdays and by appointment.

  Buy Photo

“We were getting too many fish that we couldn’t get rid of at the swap,” said Knowler. “We figured we’d open here.”

Prairie Creek also has more than a dozen outdoor ponds for hardier species. Ballard transfers those fish every spring.

“About the first of June for the smaller guppies,” he said. “The koi I just put out three days ago. Next week I’ll probably be putting the goldfish out there.”

As in any hobby, the latest novelty is a big draw.

“We’re always looking for something we think the public would like to see,” Ballard said. “People are starting to buy the young fish because they want to see them grow. The biggest comment we get from people coming in here is how clean the tanks are and how healthy the fish are.”

That’s thanks to frequent water changes — “used” water is kept and recycled — and careful monitoring of temperature, oxygen, and pH levels.

The tropical-fish trade is often a literal trade.

“Some customers are raising fish in their basements and they’re bringing them in here for store credit because they want to get something else,” he said.

  Buy Photo

Cichlids, a large, diverse family of fish with more than 1,700 distinct varieties, became a big thing about a year ago.

“Everybody was wanting cichlid,” Ballard said. “They’re a blue fish that has white lips. They were very hot on the market a year or so ago.”

Cichlids include tilapia. Prairie Creek has those, too.

“At the fish store, they say ‘Isn’t that a food fish?’” Ballard said. “Yeah, but they’re pretty.”

This year’s must-have: the L046 Zebra pleco. Named for its distinctive striped markings, it’s native to the Rio Xingu in Brazil, where it nearly became extinct.

“The market price is $100 an inch,” Ballard said. “I’m trying to breed them. It’s every hobbyist’s dream to have some.”

Ballard and Knowler offer free analysis of customers’ water samples, and plenty of advice.

  Buy Photo

“There’s a lot of information on the internet, but a lot of it’s misleading,” Ballard said. “We have customers come in and say ‘We want to start a fish tank. What’s our first step?’ We explain to them how to get an aquarium set up.”

Which helps keep the hobby fresh.

“Last weekend we had a couple come in with a little girl,” Ballard said. “It was her first fish, so they were letting her pick it out. She went over to the main tanks and sees the little fish. I gave her a good deal, and she was so happy she picked out her little baby fish.”