LFS Killed at least half our livestock - normal?

[dlockert]

Hey all,

In another post, I described the crazy that ensued after our 240 gallon tank cracked wide open and spilled out all the water and fish into the condo. That post was about our Cowfish but I have another question:

When this happened, we gathered most of our livestock which included a lot - tangs, butterflies, gobies, mandarins, Lionfish, clowns, firefish, decorator crab, sea star and things I probably can't even think of right now, and put them all in a 20 gallon tank for 3 hours until we could get them to our LFS where they promised they would take very good care of everything, not to worry. But... realize some fish won't deal well with the stress...

After 3 weeks, we went back to get our fish and less than 1/2 of them were alive. We had 3 clowns, a watchman goby, dog face puffer, powder blue tang, sleeper goby and maybe a couple of other things come home. The puffer and the power blue were COVERED in ich. The Scopus had popeye pretty bad and the sea star had lost a leg.

I know many of these fish are super sensitive and we did expect to lose some but this kind of seems like a lot. We ended up losing the powder blue, the pearl scale and sleeper once we got them home.

It's done now and it can't be changed but wondering if this seems normal? I think my mom could have kept them in the bathtub and have done just as well. Thoughts?

 

[eatbreakfast]

That is a lot of stress they were dealing with, and that compromises immune systems.

What size tank were they in? Were they in a tank connected to other fish tanks?

 

[dlockert]

That is a lot of stress they were dealing with, and that compromises immune systems.

What size tank were they in? Were they in a tank connected to other fish tanks?

They were in regular display cubes, which are basically a row of acrylic cubes fed by a water system. They were all on one water system in the back, not shared with any other cubes. I know display cubes aren't ideal... but better than the carpet at the time.

 

[TonyNguyen]

I think you could have kept them alive your for longer in that 20g with just a powerhead and W/C. Until you could find them a bigger holding tank with a local member. or your self. I had a emergency tank crash from Harvey and used my 30g ATO as a holding tank kept all my fish alive for months til I got a new tank up and running no deaths . You know your fish better than any fish store, they are like your family so you would know if something is wrong...Just my 2 cents, no money back!
Also your water is much cleaner and not a whole lot of parasite flowing around...

 

[cracker]

Sorry to to hear this ! So the fish were pretty stressed after all that. On the other hand The row cubes at the lfs might of had a bunch of fish recently in them .They could have been full of all kinds Of bad stuff.
They told Ya not to worry but really can't guarantee that.
Terrible situation. I get attached my fish not to mention the $$ lost.

 

[jcdeng]

with my LFS they usually put customer's livestock in a 80g standalone system, not connected to their main system and always dry before hand. zero lost and I even asked to buy a fish from that tank for a premium and he refused lol (a bad LFS would've sold me the fish and told the owner it died). If they'd sold me the fish I would probably not go back to them afterwards, shows character.

 

[eatbreakfast]

... I know display cubes aren't ideal... but better than the carpet at the time.

And half of them living through the ordeal is better than losing all of them...

 

[dlockert]

I think you could have kept them alive your for longer in that 20g with just a powerhead and W/C.

I agree - we could have figured something out if we realized we needed to. As you know (dealing with a flood) it is pretty overwhelming to find yourself standing in water, figuring out who to call to clean it up, dealing with insurance companies, estimates, pulling up flooring, finding new flooring, etc. so since we thought the fish were fine, we left them there.

I think my frustration is that they never really told us fish were dying - except the lionfish - which hadn't eaten for us, so wasn't unexpected. And the Ich was so bad, I just don't think anyone could have even been looking at the fish or they would have seen that for sure.

As I said, just very frustrating and sad, we had some very nice fish in there that didn't make it back home .

 

[ca1ore]

It's hard to say. Any move is stressful and can result in losses. When I did my most recent tank move I ended up losing about a third of my fish; in the move before that I lost none. Did exactly the same thing both times. As a general rule, I would not ever use my LFS as fish boarder. Not that they are not capable, but it's a 'bulk' business with the expected attendant disease problems.