Poll: How much more would you pay for quarantined fish?

[ArowanaLover1902]

I think if the seller was able to post videos/pictures of any new shipment and show procedure than it’d be easy to trust them

 

[Brew12]

I would be happy to pay the same amount for even a cheap fish. You are paying for the service not the fish, and I would be willing to pay alot if I could trust it was done well

The biggest issue I see with this is for fish that don't make it through QT. Trust me when I say that no one is going to have a 100% success rate. With some species, you would be doing very well to have a success rate of over 50%. The implications of this on a $20 fish are much different than on a $2000 fish.

 

[ArowanaLover1902]

I think you’d have to find a way to do quarantine for a really low price. Maybe keep them in a frag tank (multipurpose). You probably couldn’t charge a big amount for them either.

 

[PDR]

The biggest issue I see with this is for fish that don't make it through QT. Trust me when I say that no one is going to have a 100% success rate. With some species, you would be doing very well to have a success rate of over 50%. The implications of this on a $20 fish are much different than on a $2000 fish.

I understand this with a special order or high dollar fish, but for your average $50-$100 fish that the lfs already has in stock, they have already taken the risk by purchasing it. I would think for these type of fish, a qt service should just be a flat rate and if the fish dies it would be on the seller as they have already purchased it to begin with. Maybe the qt fee should be a nonrefundable upfront cost?

 

[Rcpilot]

I'm in the "don't trust em" camp. I'd rather do the QT myself and know the fish is as healthy as it can be, under my observation and judgement, before I turn it loose in the display tank.

I've always disagreed with the way fish are handled in this hobby. In my opinion, the LFS or online seller should be required by law to fully QT and thoroughly document the process before they're even allowed to sell a fish. Each fish purchased by the hobbyist would come with paperwork to show their health records - QT length - time in QT - medications used - observations made etc.. just like a dog you buy from the pet store or breeder. You get medical records and paperwork to prove it's been to the vet and had XX number of shots and meds prior to you purchasing it. Of course, costs for the hobbyist will go up. Just raise the prices and do it the right way, without making a production out of it. Honestly, I don't see this EVER happening in this hobby.

Local trading between hobbyists - that's on the buyer IMO. I always ran a QT tank in the past and I'm planning to run a QT tank with thew new 180g reef I'm building. IMO a QT tank is like an RO filter. It's REQUIRED if you want to be in the hobby and have any hope of success. It's on the list of "Basic Equipment" .. like tank, lights, pumps, nets, buckets, hoses, RO filters.... and a QT tank.

We're all going to buy fish in both of those scenarios -- from a local hobbyist and from a licensed vendor. So it just makes sense for everyone in this hobby to have a QT tank. They're not hard to set up and maintain.

 

[Billldg]

I think we need to look at the bigger picture. QT'ing fish for 6 plus weeks only to lose them 3 to 4 weeks in, thus having to purchase another fish and having to start all over, not having to deal with this type of stress to me is almost priceless. I have gone thru several fish because of several different reasons and I just lost another fish, a tang, in QT due to problems that were out of my control. It starts to get old having to sterilize tank and start over. I would be willing to pay double to not have to deal with this anymore. I don't have a problem with percentages because the cheaper fish would balance the price of more expensive fish.

 

[saltyhog]

I would have to trust the supplier, and that would be a hard trust for them to obtain. One of the reasons I'm rooting with all my heart for Humblefish to make it work.

Logistics would make the service option a little more problematic. It also would add to the cost I would think as now you're paying retail for the fish. It would also add to the initial unhealthiness of the fish as it would have to go through wholesaler, then retailer instead of just the wholesaler. An extra potentially contaminated system to navigate.

I would be more than willing to pay an extra 50-100% .

 

[Brew12]

I understand this with a special order or high dollar fish, but for your average $50-$100 fish that the lfs already has in stock, they have already taken the risk by purchasing it. I would think for these type of fish, a qt service should just be a flat rate and if the fish dies it would be on the seller as they have already purchased it to begin with. Maybe the qt fee should be a nonrefundable upfront cost?

I think the best you could do would be to create some sort of matrix. You would have to establish the risk of each type of fish has to not survive the QT process. You would then need to leverage that against the value of the fish.
This would be my thought process if I were going to charge someone to QT their fish.

Fish A: Gem tang for $800. Very likely to survive with no issues but a high value fish. I would probably be willing to take on the risk for a QT fee of around $60.
Fish B: Copper Band Butterfly for $50. Very challenging to get eating and high risk of death in QT but a low replacement cost. I would probably be willing to take this one on for a $80 fee.

 

[Billldg]

Agree, I would have to trust person doing QT'ing. If it were someone like @Humblefish or @4FordFamily to mention a few, then I would have no problems what so ever.

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

I understand this with a special order or high dollar fish, but for your average $50-$100 fish that the lfs already has in stock, they have already taken the risk by purchasing it. I would think for these type of fish, a qt service should just be a flat rate and if the fish dies it would be on the seller as they have already purchased it to begin with. Maybe the qt fee should be a nonrefundable upfront cost?

I don't think it's correct to conceptualize the purchase of disease-free fish as paying for X hours of someone's time, Y amount of their space, or Z amount of their medications. Sure, in a way, you are, but very few things in the US economy are itemized and charged for in this way. There are plenty of things that go into the cost of getting and selling fish that are not transparently passed on to the customer. These costs are simply expressed as the price of the fish that you buy.

When you get your roof fixed or your AC replaced, yeah, you'll likely get an itemized bill. But in a retail setting, like when you buy a coffee maker at Target, there are dozens of costs that go into the final price that you don't see. There's the cost of the coffee maker itself, the cost of the logistics to get it to the store, the cost of the shift manager's salary, the cost of the stocker's salary, the cost of the cashier's salary, the cost of the Target security's salary, the cost of the energy to run the lights and the HVAC, etc. All you ever see is the sticker price of the coffee maker.

I'm not sure I really understand the benefit of separately charging and billing for the QT space and time. I just don't get why it has to be more complicated than "Here's a disease-free fish, it costs $X."

 

[CodyRVA]

Agree with @Brew12, if i's a difficult fish to care for, I would pay more for one that has been through a solid QT process even if it's cheaper than another fish that has a higher success rate. So, percentage of cost might not be fair, but from a business perspective makes some sense. The average joe, unfamiliar with fish species, QT, ailments, etc. would likely be outraged when they see a $30 fish jump to $100 through QT while "this other fish" goes for $100 and is only $120 through QT.

 

[Leslie Tabor]

I would gladly pay Humblefish whatever he asks. My husband will absolutely not let me set up more tanks for quarantine and I have no idea what I would be doing anyway. I love my tank and if I could get healthy fish this way I totally would.

 

[Lowell Lemon]

There is a basic problem in this model and it is the end consumer and trust.

Let's say you are the seller and someone who is not careful on their end blames you for the fish loss even though you have no control over the final outcome and condition of their tank and husbandry techniques. Perhaps the fish dies in shipping due to factors outside your control. Now it becomes a very personal battle to prove who is responsible for the death of the fish. Social media and this forum become a battle ground to prove who is right. There are no winners in that situation. Your good name is damaged by someone who just brought home typhoid Mary the fish from another source and now blames you for their tank wipe out. How do you prove who is responsible? Perhaps they dropped in a new invertebrate and started the cycle all over. Who knows the many possible vectors that will result in death of the fish. How about a compromised immune system during the treatment regimen?

There are no disease free organisms on planet Earth only disease resistant ones...think about that for awhile!

All exchanges are based on trust or cost and acceptable risk. Life is risk. Fish die, people die, pets die, it has been said the only given outcome is death and taxes. You cannot control the total picture so the outcome is loss of your reputation and business due to the actions of others. Not an acceptable risk as a business.

If you want to see what loss of trust looks like just read the news today or any other day. Our political situation today is driven by loss of trust between the many divided tribes. We are devolving to partisan tribes who advance their own survival over the good of the country and goodwill toward your neighbor. Not a good environment for business, trust, or national success. Now let's argue about who is responsible for the death of that fish. Personal responsibility anyone?

 

[roberthu526]

+1. In one of Thomas Stanley's books (I think it was Millionaire Next Door, not sure though), he discussed how this happens with car manufacturers. Take Honda as an example. Honda makes the most money on more expensive cars, like their SUVs, minivans, and more expensive Acura-branded cars. They don't lose money on cheap models like Civics and Fits, but they don't make nearly as much money as they do on the SUVs. If they priced the Civic perfectly in an economic sense, or exactly how much it cost to make and R&D, they'd lose sales because it would be too expensive for the target demographic.

Sometimes, charging exactly what a product cost doesn't make economic sense if you can get more sales and reach other demographics by shifting the costs around on your balance sheets.

Thank you for the book reference. I will find try to find and read the book.

 

[Surfzone]

I see a lot of discussion on quarantining fish, with a lot of replies simply stating that the problem with this service is that hobbyists just aren't willing to pay more for a fully quarantined fish. I don't know about you, but I would be willing to pay quite a premium for a good quarantine service.

So what is the maximum amount you would be willing to pay for a full qt service on top of the price of the fish?

Edit: By full quarantine, I am referring to fully and properly medicated followed by an observation period. Use humblefish's procedure as a reference.

I would not pay more for a fish that has been in a retailer QT procedures mostly because I don't trust people. I know what my QT procedures are and at that point if something goes wrong it's all on me and I can't blame anyone else. Of course I do make sure that a fish is eating and looks healthy before I buy, and very rarely do I buy fish from online vendors.

 

[Ezrunner23]

I believe many factor are going to come into play for the price of the QT.
1 price of the fish.
2 hardiness of the fish.
3 is the QT going to be for every know pest or just some?
also i believe a contract between the buyer and the supplier that is QT if the fish is necessary.
Making it clear that the buyer already bought the fish and is getting an extra service of QT the fish at his/her own risk of a possibility of the fish dying.

 

[PDR]

I just had a thought.

Let's assume that you purchase a regular store bought fish for $50 and let's also assume that it will have some parasite, disease, etc. that would lead to its death if untreated 50% of the time. From a financial perspective, assuming you are only keeping one fish, you would have a 50/50 chance of losing your $50. If I had the opportunity to purchase the same fish for $100 with let's say a 10% chance of it having some type of disease, Idk about you, but I would pay the $100 every single time.

I think a big problem is LFS who are not honest with customers, especially new hobbyists. I tend to think most hobbyists new or seasoned, would not take the above risk if properly informed.

If I am alone in this thinking let me know. If not, why don't we try and actually demand this type of service?

 

[Humblefish]

As someone who is currently setting up this kind of business, I’d like to explain the challenges of quarantining en masse vs. as a hobbyist:

As a hobbyist, I would QT 2-3 fish at a time (usually in a 10 gal). The process was pretty straight forward: Treat for ich/velvet using copper or Chloroquine, deworm with prazi and then move the fish to a larger (29 gallon) observation tank to ensure nothing got missed. If I saw white stringy poo (intestinal worms) or a bacterial infection arose, I could deal with it in the 29 gal. Like you, I wasn’t always successful with QT, but I did pretty well. Worst case scenario... some weird Typhoid Mary disease wiped out everything in QT, I would bleach/sterilize everything and start over with a new batch of fish. But the bottom line is my fish in the DT were always protected from the unknown.

However, when you QT 50-60 fish at a time (like I have been doing) you are much more likely to encounter the following:

1. Aggressive gram negative bacterial infections, which spread from fish to fish. I recently lost 60% of a wholesale order to this. The growths started out looking like Lymphocystis, but gram staining later confirmed gram negative bacteria. Even worse, the growths spread over the fishes’ internal organs (via necropsy) which explained why just dosing the water with antibiotics didn’t halt the fish deaths.
2. I have been encountering praziquantel resistant strains of monogeneans (flukes) and turbellarians (black ich). I never saw this before as a hobbyist. When this happens, I have to treat the entire QT with either hyposalinity or formalin in order to 100% eradicate.
3. I currently am using 8-40 breeders and 4-29 gallon aquariums as quarantine tanks. As bacteria spreads & biofilm forms in these QTs, any medications (except copper) I dose become less & less effective due to biodegradation. So periodically I have to completely break down and sterilize each & every QT in order to hit the reset button. (I am currently experimenting with just dosing chlorine in order to accomplish this.) But the cost of reseeding these QTs with nitrifying bacteria is just another expense associated with QTing on a commercial level.
4. All of the medications I use are pharmaceutical grade vs. what some aquarium company sells. It’s a lot more expensive to medicate this way, but I can only trust what I know has been tested to be 99% pure or better.
5. No words can express my disgust with the sorry state of livestock wholesalers and the aquarium industry as a whole right now. It’s very difficult to QT on a commercial level when you have such a bad starting point to work from.

As much as I advocate using medications, I do realize they are inherently bad for the fish. Every med you dose into the water your fish’s liver & kidneys has to filter + there are always side effects. So, I had hoped to only use minimal medications on my fish and rely upon observation to determine if additional treatment was required. This approach worked for me in the beginning, but after my recent bout with gram negative bacteria I have come to realize I need to get a lot more aggressive with medicating + food soaking medications. As a MB recently told me, everything that goes wrong on the outside with these fish also goes wrong on the inside.

So, I will keep soldering on, trying to improve my techniques and get ahead of this learning curve. FWIW; this has never been about making money for me. This is about stopping all this indiscriminate loss of fish life, and putting pressure on the industry as a whole to do the same. Wish me luck.

 

[raul medina]

Any known online vendors with QT fish???

 

[Brew12]

As someone who is currently setting up this kind of business, I’d like to explain the challenges of quarantining en masse vs. as a hobbyist:

As a hobbyist, I would QT 2-3 fish at a time (usually in a 10 gal). The process was pretty straight forward: Treat for ich/velvet using copper or Chloroquine, deworm with prazi and then move the fish to a larger (29 gallon) observation tank to ensure nothing got missed. If I saw white stringy poo (intestinal worms) or a bacterial infection arose, I could deal with it in the 29 gal. Like you, I wasn’t always successful with QT, but I did pretty well. Worst case scenario... some weird Typhoid Mary disease wiped out everything in QT, I would bleach/sterilize everything and start over with a new batch of fish. But the bottom line is my fish in the DT were always protected from the unknown.

However, when you QT 50-60 fish at a time (like I have been doing) you are much more likely to encounter the following:

1. Aggressive gram negative bacterial infections, which spread from fish to fish. I recently lost 60% of a wholesale order to this. The growths started out looking like Lymphocystis, but gram staining later confirmed gram negative bacteria. Even worse, the growths spread over the fishes’ internal organs (via necropsy) which explained why just dosing the water with antibiotics didn’t halt the fish deaths.
2. I have been encountering praziquantel resistant strains of monogeneans (flukes) and turbellarians (black ich). I never saw this before as a hobbyist. When this happens, I have to treat the entire QT with either hyposalinity or formalin in order to 100% eradicate.
3. I currently am using 8-40 breeders and 4-29 gallon aquariums as quarantine tanks. As bacteria spreads & biofilm forms in these QTs, any medications (except copper) I dose become less & less effective due to biodegradation. So periodically I have to completely break down and sterilize each & every QT in order to hit the reset button. (I am currently experimenting with just dosing chlorine in order to accomplish this.) But the cost of reseeding these QTs with nitrifying bacteria is just another expense associated with QTing on a commercial level.
4. All of the medications I use are pharmaceutical grade vs. what some aquarium company sells. It’s a lot more expensive to medicate this way, but I can only trust what I know has been tested to be 99% pure or better.
5. No words can express my disgust with the sorry state of livestock wholesalers and the aquarium industry as a whole right now. It’s very difficult to QT on a commercial level when you have such a bad starting point to work from.

As much as I advocate using medications, I do realize they are inherently bad for the fish. Every med you dose into the water your fish’s liver & kidneys has to filter + there are always side effects. So, I had hoped to only use minimal medications on my fish and rely upon observation to determine if additional treatment was required. This approach worked for me in the beginning, but after my recent bout with gram negative bacteria I have come to realize I need to get a lot more aggressive with medicating + food soaking medications. As a MB recently told me, everything that goes wrong on the outside with these fish also goes wrong on the inside.

So, I will keep soldering on, trying to improve my techniques and get ahead of this learning curve. FWIW; this has never been about making money for me. This is about stopping all this indiscriminate loss of fish life, and putting pressure on the industry as a whole to do the same. Wish me luck.

So... your rather uniformed opinion is that properly QT'd fish could be expensive? ;Wideyed