Shameless_Dood
Active Member
I will be the first to admit, I am the extremely picky hobbyist when I go to the fish store. I do much better shopping online because I just get what I get and I deal with it.
Today, there's a LFS who is hosting an event for those of us who lost a lot (or all) of livestock in the great freeze of 2 months ago. The event promised some good discounts and I just had a batch of fish finish QT are in a holding tank while I'm waiting on my new tank to be delivered. Had to register in advance to be able to shop today. Went over, stood in line for about 45 minutes, browsed around, they had 3 or 4 fish I was interested in.....and I ended up walking out without buying a thing.
Two things that turned me off. They have these laminated cards that have a picture of the fish, reef safe, what they eat, tank size, and a price. Almost %90 percent of those tags the price was blacked out with a marker and a new price was written in same black marker. The old price was still discernable on many and with a quick calculation most were all marked up %20-%30. I thought it was odd, but explainable, everybody's costs are going up, I am sure they didn't have time to re-print and re-laminate cards. Doing cards like that is nice, but maybe not the best way to run things since the wholesalers costs will change, passing the price down to the store, passed down to the consumer, etc.
But then, the number of sick fish and obviously infected with parasites was just a huge turn off. I was seeing ich, uronema, brook, you name it. While I do assume whatever I bring in has a disease and qt. I just couldn't bring myself to knowingly buy something ill, deep discount or not.
A part of me is still, "dude you were going to QT anyway and treat for everything you were seeing." Are my standards just too high or am I nuts?
Today, there's a LFS who is hosting an event for those of us who lost a lot (or all) of livestock in the great freeze of 2 months ago. The event promised some good discounts and I just had a batch of fish finish QT are in a holding tank while I'm waiting on my new tank to be delivered. Had to register in advance to be able to shop today. Went over, stood in line for about 45 minutes, browsed around, they had 3 or 4 fish I was interested in.....and I ended up walking out without buying a thing.
Two things that turned me off. They have these laminated cards that have a picture of the fish, reef safe, what they eat, tank size, and a price. Almost %90 percent of those tags the price was blacked out with a marker and a new price was written in same black marker. The old price was still discernable on many and with a quick calculation most were all marked up %20-%30. I thought it was odd, but explainable, everybody's costs are going up, I am sure they didn't have time to re-print and re-laminate cards. Doing cards like that is nice, but maybe not the best way to run things since the wholesalers costs will change, passing the price down to the store, passed down to the consumer, etc.
But then, the number of sick fish and obviously infected with parasites was just a huge turn off. I was seeing ich, uronema, brook, you name it. While I do assume whatever I bring in has a disease and qt. I just couldn't bring myself to knowingly buy something ill, deep discount or not.
A part of me is still, "dude you were going to QT anyway and treat for everything you were seeing." Are my standards just too high or am I nuts?
