As a recent Penn State grad, let me just say congratulations on being a part of the greatest school ever. I didn't keep any tanks in my time there, but i can tell you that there is one LFS in the nittany mall which is just about 15 minutes from downtown State College. Its called Finatics. Never been there myself, but that'd be the first place i'd go.
Water quality is fantastic if you plan on keeping African Ciclids. Better keep that RO system handy.
Edit in regards to longgonedaddy's comment about that fish place in lancaster. I've spent a fair amount of time there. Its a very good store to go look around. Huge, they have an impressive fish and reptile room. As far as quality of the fish there, i've not had good experiences. I kept angel fish for a while and any time i would buy fish from there to add to my tank, all of my other fish would get ick and die. If you do buy fish from there, i suggest a long quarantine period. Also check to see if Penn State has an aquarium club, they've got a club for just about everything.
Hello from Eastern PA! Congrats on the college career! I live outside of allentown and my water comes in extremely hard from the local water authority, 400+tds... I have a whole house salt softener to approx 225 tds and then RO unit to drop my tds to about 5. I am about 3 hours away from state college and have never lived there so i do not know how it is in state college.
A really great fish store is outside of lancaster, a 2 hour drive from State College and not far from there is Msjinkzd, an importer of everything nano, check out her youtube channel, I get a lot of my fish from her, always getting in interesting and exotic freshwater fish. Those are the two spots that i know of out that way. You can contact msjinkzd, she is very nice and is highly connected in the fish world, she would know a lot about freshwater clubs, all the legal importing rules and also may know about some local shops.
Good Luck with your move and your schooling!
Ricky Fins is a great shop. He has FW and SW, great guy too, very knowledgable. 40 min from PSU MainThere was a guy in Lewistown (appx 40 min SE from State College) that used to import some pretty nice stuff. He was selling mainly on Aquabid and I'm not sure that he still does. Something to look into though. There is a Petco on Atherton St. near Wegmans that does have a decent fish section with more than just the bread and butter fish that you often find at the big box stores. Last time I was there was appx 2 years ago but they had numerous species of cories including Sterbai's, various shrimp species, a few Apisto species, Some Tanganykia cichlids and a decent plant selection. Again, this is a few years ago but worth a look. There is also a new store in Duncansville (which is near Altoona and a straight shot down I-99 from State College) called Ricky Fin's Aquatics. I've not been there yet but they do have a facebook page and a 4.4 out of 5 star rating.
Hope this helps and Welcome to PA
Roy
