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Freshwater tanks at Sailfin (Kristine Eudey, Buzz photographer)

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Fish swim in plastic bags, waiting to be purchased. Staff buzz around the store, asking who needs help, who needs feeder mice, and recommending frozen fish food.

Puffer fish, juvenile chameleons and geckos look on to see John Cwaygel, 50, hurrying around the store.

Cwaygel, the Sailfin Pet Shop’s proprietor, has salt and pepper hair and curious, intelligent eyes. He hurries around the store, cleaning grime out of a tank filter, in the back office balancing the books or on the sales floor, scooping out a customer’s newest aquatic companion.

“Anybody can run a pet store,” he said. “It’s that 10 to 20 percent of extra effort that makes all the difference in the world.”

A leopard eel slithers around its tank and a queen angelfish shimmers in the afternoon light. Cwaygel and his staff tend hundreds of fish in the store, animals that range in price from $3 to $300.

“He’s very passionate about what he does,” said Rachel Whitcomb, the assistant manager. “His heart and soul is in the store; it’s very contagious.”

Whitcomb said it doesn’t matter if Cwaygel is selling you something for 50 cents or for $500. “He’ll sit down and talk to you about why your leopard gecko isn’t eating for an hour without thinking about it,” she said.

In an industry where major chains take up most of the market share, the small business must evolve.

“Those of us who have survived adapted to that environment,” Cwaygel said. He has seen 27 stores in central Illinois go bottom up in the last 10 years, he said.

The decline of independents across the country didn’t leave Sailfin untouched, Cwaygel said. Sailfin was once the state leader in the raising of birds; but that has been pulled back in recent years. The company has many exotic animals, from monitor lizards to designer, ornamental goldfish, which he gets directly from a breeder in China. One-on-one relationships like that one are the foundation of the store, he said.

Cwaygel has bred fish and run a hatchery since he was eight-years-old, he said. His parents started him out with a goldfish, and then a full tank, and then even more tanks. As costs mounted his dad told him he had to learn the other side of business.

Cwaygel grew up in Morton Grove, a northwest suburb of Chicago. In high school he kept up with the tanks sold fish to the local pet store. He came to the University for veterinary school, but ended up studying political science and economics, which led him to the idea of law school.

But when the opportunity was presented, he jumped at the chance of owning the store.

“I didn’t want to go to Yale Law School; I wanted to take a year off,” he said. He was burned out from his studies and working at the old Sailfin. The owner offered him the store. “And like an idiot, I bought it, without realizing what I was getting myself into,” he said. “I figured I’d take a couple years off for business, but I haven’t gone back yet.”

The customers and the animals are the focus of the store, Cwaygel said. His goal is to ensure that one takes care of the other. “If I don’t teach you,” he said, “I’ve failed two entities: the hamster, and you as well.”

“It’s in our economic interest to build a relationship with our customers,” he said. An owner who takes on a pet will return to a store for supplies and food, and with a long-lived pet, that can turn into years of business. They’re in it for the long term, he said.

Pets provide lessons that otherwise might not be learned, he said. “My four-year-old’s hamster just passed away, but four year olds need to learn that things pass away.”

“Nothing leaves us tickled like having 37 screaming four-year-olds destroying the store,” he said. Most people have pets, but they don’t all have exotic pets such as the type in the store, he explained. “When a child sees that a snake isn’t slimy and isn’t going to bite, when they see it gently coil around their hand, you can’t pay enough to see that.”