Is it all on us?

[Pauley]

So, I made the mistake of adding an untreated frag to one of my DTs. Long story short, my fish came down with brook, velvet, or some combo of the two. I began treatment, but my beloved purple tang and coral beauty were dead within two days of becoming symptomatic. Of course, I kicked myself for being stupid.

But then it occurred to me-why does this fall completely on the consumer? How has the hobby progressed to this point? Most of us will fight a vendor to the death over some minor issue with a piece of equipment, but fully expect fish to be diseased upon purchase.

Imagine walking into a puppy store knowing that 90% or more of the puppies there are ill, and once you purchase one, it will likely die without weeks to months of treatment which you will have to pay for and provide on your own. Also, no refunds if that happens. People would be burning down that puppy store, and yet, perfectly acceptable in our hobby. You can argue that the difference is wild caught vs bred, too slim a profit margin to treat, issues with suppliers, too much volume, etc. I feel like the truth is, we as hobbiests have let this happen. The stores run low doses of meds to keep the fish asymptomatic just long enough to unload them on us. Frags are full of pests, from aptasia to flatworms to disease. And yet, they’ve managed to pass the burden of dealing with issues onto us, while still managing to raise prices on everything we buy. Because...they can.

I know some people won’t agree, and this is really not meant to be a rant so much as to see how y’all feel. Is this just the norm now in this hobby, and we just have to deal? Is there anything that can/should be done by us, the consumers? Curious what people think...

 

[rkpetersen]

Price is king for readily available fish and corals, with few exceptions. Keeping critters healthy or nursing sick animals back to health costs time and money. Retailers would have to charge more for such livestock. Experience has shown that most buyers won't pay more when they can get the same fish that just came into the store or is at the store down the street or online for less. Most sellers have to cater to the typical buyer, the market is too small to do otherwise. So it's on us picky few to either not deal with most sellers, or make up the difference ourselves.

Edit: Also, unfortunately, most people see fish as more 'disposable' than a dog or a cat, and therefore, their standards are different.

 

[davocean]

It's all on you to make sure you treat or qt anything you put in tank, yes.

Fish stores could not exist if they were held liable for any disease or parasite that went into your tank, many are just impossible to detect by naked eye, or may not be showing signs at time of sale.

I'm happy that someone just provides the ability to purchase the things we do, I'll take it from there and properly dip and or QT any animal before adding to my display.

 

[JaimeAdams]

So Puppies, aren't they all captive breed? Do these puppies come into the store and are then mixes with other puppies from all over the world? Are you suggesting that the fish store take every fish to a vet to have a gill scraping, a skin scraping and a fecal check performed?

As above. It's not cost effective. Sure I could charge you $120 for a small yellow tang if you want it pre treated. 90% of my customers would just go down the street to buy the same fish for $50 or $60. It's our own fault, if 90% of the people will buy then the stores will sell.

 

[cancun]

So, I made the mistake of adding an untreated frag to one of my DTs. Long story short, my fish came down with brook, velvet, or some combo of the two. I began treatment, but my beloved purple tang and coral beauty were dead within two days of becoming symptomatic. Of course, I kicked myself for being stupid.

But then it occurred to me-why does this fall completely on the consumer? How has the hobby progressed to this point? Most of us will fight a vendor to the death over some minor issue with a piece of equipment, but fully expect fish to be diseased upon purchase.

Imagine walking into a puppy store knowing that 90% or more of the puppies there are ill, and once you purchase one, it will likely die without weeks to months of treatment which you will have to pay for and provide on your own. Also, no refunds if that happens. People would be burning down that puppy store, and yet, perfectly acceptable in our hobby. You can argue that the difference is wild caught vs bred, too slim a profit margin to treat, issues with suppliers, too much volume, etc. I feel like the truth is, we as hobbiests have let this happen. The stores run low doses of meds to keep the fish asymptomatic just long enough to unload them on us. Frags are full of pests, from aptasia to flatworms to disease. And yet, they’ve managed to pass the burden of dealing with issues onto us, while still managing to raise prices on everything we buy. Because...they can.

I know some people won’t agree, and this is really not meant to be a rant so much as to see how y’all feel. Is this just the norm now in this hobby, and we just have to deal? Is there anything that can/should be done by us, the consumers? Curious what people think...

Very interesting take on this subject....in this hobby the burden is on the consumer for sure. Buyer beware..... buying any fish, coral, etc now days is like playing Russian Roulette.....I have about 10 LFS all within a 45 min drive from me or less....I only buy from 2 of them. If that tells you anything.

Interesting analogy about the puppies. You are right.... people would be burning the place down, it would be all over the news, and the pet store, and person who sold the puppies would probably be arrested. Most people not in this hobby would say fish aren't puppies..... however us in the hobby look at differently.

 

[tiggs]

One thing I'd like to add is that we are starting to see very reputable places offering full QT services for everything they sell. TSM (R2R sponsor) is a great example of this. I live 10 minutes from them, so I'm seen their QT operation and can say it's more thorough than probably 95% of aquarists on here. The downside of this is what's already been mentioned. It's going to cost a few bucks more per fish/invert/coral. To me, it's a no brainer. I'd rather pay a few extra bucks to get something I know is healthy and has already been treated, observed, and conditioned to accept frozen food. Hopefully, this becomes the new industry standard in the coming years. The other option is to purchase captively bred fish from places that either only sell captively bred or places that keep everything captively bred in a completely separate system from their other stock. Lots of places like this exist and if what you're looking for happens to be bred in captivity, it's a good option.

Other than that, we have no choice other than to QT everything. Also, the only way a fish parasite can survive long enough on a frag without a host would be if the vendor is keeping the fish they're getting from the wholesaler in the same system as their coral or sharing equipment between two separate systems. Most places don't do this and keep their fish and coral systems separate, aside from a healthy fish or two of their own that's never in the same system as the fish being freshly imported. By mixing everything up and/or sharing equipment between the two, they're opening up the door for parasite transfer and also not able to use copper in their systems. I avoid buying from places that have a mixed setup like this at all costs.

 

[cancun]

Out of curiosity....to the OP....was the coral frag the only thing you introduced recently? I am sorry about your purple tang and coral beauty too! Tough loss for sure!

 

[davocean]

Interesting analogy about the puppies. You are right.... people would be burning the place down, it would be all over the news, and the pet store, and person who sold the puppies would probably be arrested. Most people not in this hobby would say fish aren't puppies..... however us in the hobby look at differently.

These days I see people easily pay a grand or 2 on a purebred puppy, someone selling a litter probably has the vet check figured into that price.
But this is for a local puppy, if someone in fiji dove a couple hundred feet for that puppy and shipped it from fiji it might cost a bit more...

Honestly, it just amazes me sometimes that an animal half way around the globe, maybe hundreds of feet below, can be on my porch the next morning after I order it!
Makes a QT not seem like such a big thing to me.

 

[rkpetersen]

aside from a healthy fish or two of their own that's never in the same system as the fish being freshly imported.

With a sign on the tank that says "[FishNameHere] is a Store Pet - NFS!"

 

[Pauley]

Out of curiosity....to the OP....was the coral frag the only thing you introduced recently? I am sorry about your purple tang and coral beauty too! Tough loss for sure!

Yeah, that was it. I do qt fish, but nothing new in that tank for months.

So Puppies, aren't they all captive breed? Do these puppies come into the store and are then mixes with other puppies from all over the world? Are you suggesting that the fish store take every fish to a vet to have a gill scraping, a skin scraping and a fecal check performed?

Of course not. Merely wondering if the stores could/should put all their livestock through a qt process similar to what we now have to do prior to selling them. I totally understand the cost argument- however, all of my usual stores (Orlando area) are either talking about expanding, or are in the process of getting bigger. I don’t feel like any of them are hurting for money.

My personal opinion, after 20+ years of keeping various tanks is that the internet (be it online sales or advertising) has driven competition to the point where stores have to maintain a large variety and move high volume, or risk losing sales. Healthy is no longer a concern, because hobbiests don’t expect it, and frankly, stores won’t invest a penny more than they have to. The point of this thread is merely to serve as a barometer for what you fine people feel is appropriate in the hobby in this day and age.

I agree with tiggs- I think a niche market will develop for qt/pest free alternatives. You already see it with corals, and I think fish will follow soon. It will be a little more expensive for sure, but cater to a certain subset of buyers.

 

[davocean]

I think absolutely fish stores struggle, and probably always have even before the internet, but yes more so since.

We have lost a lot of LFS around here, they just can't seem to make it, unless they are petco's w/other animal sales that probably help make that work.

There are people that talk about selling pre QT'd fish and one member on here was talking about trying to get that started, but I wonder if that is really a viable thing, I mean not only for the added expense, but now you are advertising a gauranteed disease free animal, so that could potentially make you liable for all animals in a persons tank should something go wrong.

 

[cracker]

We really want these fish The Ones who sell them got us ! It would take a world wide boycott ! LOL

 

[HotRocks]

Another thing to add. These fish stores are receiving fish in terrible shape. You have to realize how many fish they lose just upon receiving a shipment.

The distribution system is polluted.

Also, it's on us to properly QT our inhabitants. Keep in mind the larger the quantity you attempt to QT the more difficult it is. I'm not saying I don't think some things could happen that make this better for us as hobbyists. Being a business owner (non fish related) myself, you have to be able to make money to stay in business. So where is the happy medium?

There are a lot of factors involved unfortunately...

 

[JaimeAdams]

I talked to the owner of one of it not the largest import companies a few days back. He said that the last 2 months were his worst in half a decade. As a LFS employee I can tell you that the local stores are struggling to survive. Amazon and online retailers hurt. The places that are selling items from their garage without the cost of retail space, insurance, employees etc. That or the big companies who have way more buying power than the small local place that I work who can name their own reasonable price by buying 10 pallets at a time kind of places.

There are threads on the additional cost involved with stores QTing fish. First off most stores aren't set up to have individual systems, although I have seen one or two like that. So if I am getting fish in every week or twice a week or whatever have you I can treat my fish system. Therapeutic copper would kill fish put strait into it without a build up to the level. So if a store did want to be able to do that they would need to have individual systems which means a lot more money in equipment costs and most store would need to completely re-do their systems and lay out.

Then how long do I want to hold a fish, 30 days of copper, 2 weeks of prazi toss in some focus/metro. The name of the game is to flip the fish and do the volume. I don't want "inventory" taking up shelf space for 4 - 6 weeks while needing food and possibly not doing well in the meds and dying. Then lets say that you are doing weekly water changes for lets say 1000 gallons of tank, we'll keep it small, so half a box of salt a week over 6 weeks. Lets say we also want to treat something in antibiotics as well, so not just the small costs of the antibiotics, but also the employee cost to do daily water changes and the salt to replace those daily water changes. Obviously the store will have some loss, lets call it through QT 20% loss. All this combined with the people who have never QTed a fish and take it home and toss it in their tanks with parasites present and the fish gets covered in spots, guess who is getting blamed...

Those factors mean that a fully QT fish has more than a couple dollar markup associated with it. I would say minimum, 50% increase probably more, realistically double the price. Where I live the standard cost of a yellow tang is $60. I can go to Petco and get a yellow tang for $45. If I had to QT and treat that yellow tang for a month and a half I would be looking at asking $120 for a fish that the "average" hobbyist seeing at Petco while picking up their dog food for 1/3 the price.

People the fully QT their fish or even consider doing so is a very small subset of people with marine tanks. Sure you hear about it all day on the forums, but most people with tanks aren't on the forums. Peoples heads explode when I tell them that they should have fish QT tank and an invert QT tank along with their 55 in the living room.

 

[Tamberav]

Actually if you buy a puppy from a pet store it is probably from a puppy mill and not from a quality breeder. I wouldn't buy a puppy from a pet store.. ever.

You can buy coral from many venders that is likely to be pest free and isn't exposed to tons of random fish.

You can pay more for 'conditioned' fish from Divers Den if you have nothing local in your area.

I would not expect a LFS to actually QT every fish for 4-8 weeks. The price would go up and many people would not buy it. We do have a LFS that conditions fish for 1-2 weeks or longer if needed and its great but it's not long enough to 100% guarantee anything and I still QT those fish too but realize they have a better chance making it through my QT than fish just arriving at Petco/where ever.

Honestly people should be supporting captive bred fish wherever they can. I feel these fish come in a lot healthier and used to living their whole lives in a tank. I always pick them up in the bag or have them shipped directly from ORA, ect. This way they are not exposed to wild populations and the parasites they carry. I wish the LFS had a seperate system not exposed to the wild fish.. for the captive breds. My clowns came directly from a breeder, robust, healthy, disease free. The only shame right now is many captive bred fish are not being produced in big numbers.

I would pay double or triple for captive bred but honestly fall into that 'population' that would rather QT their own wild fish than pay significantly more for them. Mostly because I don't trust other peoples QT procedures.

 

[rkpetersen]

I wish the LFS had a seperate system not exposed to the wild fish.. for the captive breds.

Some do exactly this. But then comes the problem of them getting livestock for that system from different breeders, and then it just takes one shipment with disease present from any of them to upset the apple cart. So it's no guarantee either. A month ago, I added 23 fantastic Sea&Reef clowns that I specifically ordered through an LFS and picked up in the bag immediately on arrival at the store. Store gave me a sizeable discount over online retail, just a perfect transaction all around and these fish have been healthy, hungry and playful, really as much as I was hoping for and more.

 

[Dburr1014]

I always buy from 1 store near me. I always ask how long was the fish there. If less than a month, I pass by.
I did go to 1 other store recently because I had a gift card and all my fish got Ick. Now I will qt. Now I will only buy from the 1 place.

 

[Victoria M]

I was actaully discussing this with Brew today. I actually tell people that copper is like chemo. you hope it kills the disease before the patient. Sometimes it is easier to talk through things with my nonhobbyist medical friends, than hobbyists. We understand everything you just described as par for the course of serious illness. These are serious illness's.
Disease is inherent in the tropical fish wholesale business. It is the very nature of this hobby to be a ripe environment for spreading disease. International travel, poor nutrition, poor environment, exposure to different parasites and pathogens than one is used to (and have some natural immediate immune response to), very close quarters, very few signs of illness until late disease process, all thrown in with other species that would never encounter each other in nature.
I have thought about this a lot since I am setting up a new system. and recently had a terrible experience buying online. When I first got into this hobby I learned which LFS to trust, which fish would live. Now that store did not have the neatest cleanest tanks, but he avoided buying from places that he suspected used cyanide catching, he did not drip acclimate, he QT'd the fish in copper for 2 weeks prior to placing them in his sale tanks. and he fed them well. The hardier, aka healthier, survived and the less hardy specimens died in his QT tanks. I also presume the extra things he did to prepare his livestock made them a wee bit hardier, aka healthier before they came to me.
And it also occures to that his fish survived more of my rookie mistakes than the LFS that drip acclimated, with air stones, then placed the fish directly into their sale tanks. Took me a few years to understand that. I had to read books to figure that stuff out. lol. I did not know about RC or R2R back then. I did email Bob Fenner a lot back then, though.
My point is that by skipping the LFS we are now facing the issues they face. There does seem to be a lot of anectdotal evidence that fish are currently coming in with more disease than in the past and more virulent disease too. I do wish that fish whole salers would rotate between systems and sterilize them in between to break the cycle of disease. It would be an enormous undertaking I am sure. But well worth the lives of fish.
BTW the LFS owner that I chat with has told me that he is not experiencing an inreased amount of fish not making it through his QT process.
years ago folks always said 2 weeks was not enough of a QT but he always said it worked for him. and I have never lost a fish from him.

Sorry for the enormous post...I thought it was fitting though.