This could end very badly for our hobby ...

[eatbreakfast]

What industies adequately self police? Just about any industry that faces regulations, does so due governmental agencies. Would you trust food or drug companies to police themselves? What about banking or other financial institutions? Building and manufacturing industries? Clothing is largely unregulated and look at how many sweatshops exist in third world countries. To think the hobby will self police on the industry side is looking for a solution that will never exist. Responsibility rests the most on the hobbyist level. Find out if your fish are caught responsibly.

As a hobbyist, I know that if I had unexplicable deaths, I would change sources. There are plenty of responsible options, however all too often hobbyists go for the cheapest option, not the best.

 

[reeferfoxx]

Knowledge is key, in this hobby. Don't support LFS that have disease livestock. Don't support LFS that have disease livestock. Don't support LFS that have disease livestock. Don't support LFS that have disease livestock. Don't support LFS that have disease livestock.

Don't support LFS that have bryopsis, dinos, pyramid snails, etc etc. Their poor habits speak loudy and we shouldn't support them. Those folks that do things right, that sell quality products, deserve our business and deserve to stay in business. The others will fizzle out. Doing this promotes a healthy happy hobby.

 

[ozadars]

I agree that responsibility mostly (if not all) rests on hobbyists. Why should we expect foreign governments, organizations or for profit industries to protect our rights? However, it is not enough to just to check if the fish are caught responsibly. If you think that you can save the reefs and the hobby by 'responsible consumption', i don't think we will go too far.

We need to contribute to the conservation of the reefs and wellbeing of the local communities with our hobby. It needs to be integrated within our hobby as a core components. If the reefs are dyeing and if our hobby is dependent on the reefs, it is not hard to conclude that we need to do something additional than consuming to save the reefs.

The sustainability problems within the marine aquarium industry is way beyond the catching methods. To fight against a growing stigma against the reef keepers, we need to become the protectors of the reefs. There are many questions unanswered in the hobby. Are mariculture coral farms sustainable? How does captive breeding activities in the West affect the lives of the coastal communities who earn their income from this industry? Which animals should be left in the reefs? What is our role in fighting against the global problems that damage coral reefs? How do we make the supply chains shorter and more transparent so that local communities can earn a fair income? How do we raise the capacity of the local communities so that they can play an important role in reef conservation? How do we make sure a big swimming fish like tang doesn't suffer up in a 10 gal tank? How do we minimize the death of livestock in hobbyists aquariums? How do we encourage hobbyist to exchange more frags, equipments and own-bred fish so we are less reliable to the wildstock or corporations?

These questions and many more needs to be answered by us. If not, we will receive a lot of backlash from NGOs and other parties in the near future.

 

[Kungpaoshizi]

Run out of water, are you serious? Come to south Louisiana, we have plenty of water for ya to borrow. As a matter of fact, it's up to our rooftops.

It's already happened in California.. And that was the aquafiers.

The thing people don't think about is that a person is 2/3 water. And then after the person is born, they require X amount of water each day to survive. Now you have a population that displaces water continually, and then grow that population at an exponential rate.

It's going to happen eventually... I think Terra Nova was one of the best shows aside from Soylent Green that captures that timeline..

 

[mcarroll]

Knowledge is key, in this hobby. Don't support LFS that have disease livestock. Don't support LFS that have disease livestock. Don't support LFS that have disease livestock. Don't support LFS that have disease livestock. Don't support LFS that have disease livestock.

Give me a break. Head in the sand about how fish get to dealers? They all have disease.

Don't support the online vendor WHERE YOU CAN NEVER KNOW WHAT THEIR OPERATION IS LIKE and therefor can't even give feedback or conscientiously avoid them.

Don't support the online vendor that puts your fish through ONE MORE LONG DISTANCE SHIPPING LEG when the fish don't need it.

Don't support the online vendor that uses livestock guarantees – they only exist to make up for high livestock death rates, which comes at least partly from the excessive shipping.​

I should go on...

The one-sided slants that seem to show up here regularly against the LFS are very irritating and very very short-sighted (R2R management should take an interest IMO) so this has to be said....but apologies for being irritated. :mad:

• Support your LFS.
• Remember that the person(s) who run it ARE YOUR NEIGHBORS. Not some jag-off hiding behind a website.
• Even if they don't work up to your ideals, BE NICE TO THEM.
• When you're nice to people, they are usually very receptive and nice back to you. Maybe you can make a difference. (I did.)

It's little wonder that local businesses suffer so much.....this anti-local attitude is the reason. How much longer before we have no local economy left to speak of? I guess that's what we really want?

People with this anti- attitude are getting the job done though! I'm in a major metro area and there are virtually no LFS's left even here. The bad ones closed a decade ago....the good ones all went in the last 10 years.

Good job, people!! Keep supporting people you don't even know that don't live anywhere close to you....let your neighborhood suffer some more. The few businesses that China didn't kill will all be gone soon.

 

[reeferfoxx]

People with this anti- attitude are getting the job done though! I'm in a major metro area and there are virtually no LFS's left even here. The bad ones closed a decade ago....the good ones all went in the last 10 years.

The bad ones closed a decade ago? Explain? You are giving me hypocritical grief. I've seen GOOD local fish store sell quality fish. The ones I speak of quarantine freshly ordered livestock and don't put them up for sale right away. There are good ones. The ones I'm talking about tell there customers, don't buy till we get this figured out. Or please make sure you acclimate due to high amounts of copper running in our systems. You can't get that bent out of shape telling us to go ahead and support the mom and pop shop only looking for a dime and not giving insight.

 

[Kungpaoshizi]

As a hobbyist, I know that if I had unexplicable deaths, I would change sources. There are plenty of responsible options, however all too often hobbyists go for the cheapest option, not the best.

This comment though makes me think about my unexplainable deaths I had for a period of time. Then at one point I realized I was dipping all the corals in Bayer. Then I bring it up for more thought into finding info on the compounds in it. I got flamed by those who use it.

I use the same fish store to this day, use a different coral dip, and have had 99% less deaths with zero other changes to my tank, methods, or acclimation procedure.

We need to change more than sources in some cases, we need to get our collective heads out of our rears and acknowledge we don't know everything. So speculation and education is one of our best friends. We need to keep each other in check as far as new methods go and don't flame the select few who actually have the gall to step forward and say 'I think this might be bad'.

I'm not looking to get back into that argument, but it's small things like that we can do differently instead of thinking just because we had a decent number of success stories, means we have to stone to death the person(s) who step forward and ask if we can actually do things better.

Heck, that thread could have taken a tangent into finding a new coral dip that works better, instead it was a firing squad defending what? The fact people can't even take the warning on the label seriously to not use in aquatic environments?

Not looking to debate or argue the merits of one way or another, but it's things like that influence people outside the hobby. The random individual who contacted the EPA over that and shared that info and told me it's against federal law, I can only imagine what the EPA person has started to tell people about coral hobbyists!!! They probably think we're all stonedead dumb, malicious ignorant fools.

 

[pablue]

its is on the hobbyist to think before they purchase a fish or coral, and if you don't know anything about it then it's shouldn't leave the store with you that day!! Snorkel Bob here see the worst of that hobby because he wants to attack an issue of lose of fish! anyone ever think that maybe its because the water is becoming acidic, or the temps on the reefs are rising, maybe its because ocean liner companies are paying government officials to move and dredge reefs out so they can move more directly to port?? plus we aren't the issue as a trade, without reef keeping we wouldn't know what we do about the oceans!

 

[seth&angelle]

It's already happened in California.. And that was the aquafiers.

The thing people don't think about is that a person is 2/3 water. And then after the person is born, they require X amount of water each day to survive. Now you have a population that displaces water continually, and then grow that population at an exponential rate.

It's going to happen eventually... I think Terra Nova was one of the best shows aside from Soylent Green that captures that timeline..

It's not possible to run out of water. We have the same amount of water since the beginning of time. It just changes it forms from lakes, rivers, oceans, aquifers, frozen glaciers, and back into the atmosphere. It's possible that we could pollute all of our freshwater but we will never straight up run out of water. Some places on earth are in drought and some places have too much, but the earth can't just run out of water.

 

[Kungpaoshizi]

It's not possible to run out of water. We have the same amount of water since the beginning of time. It just changes it forms from lakes, rivers, oceans, aquifers, frozen glaciers, and back into the atmosphere. It's possible that we could pollute all of our freshwater but we will never straight up run out of water. Some places on earth are in drought and some places have too much, but the earth can't just run out of water.

But where does the water come from that's in our bodies? What happens when the population grows to an insane number? (we do displace the water from the Earth don't we?)

 

[reeferfoxx]

But where does the water come from that's in our bodies? What happens when the population grows to an insane number? (we do displace the water from the Earth don't we?)

Water comes from the water your mom drank. Then we drink water as we grow up. It all get pee'd out and recycled.

 

[mcarroll]

Don't support LFS that have disease livestock. Don't support LFS that have disease livestock. Don't support LFS that have disease livestock. Don't support LFS that have disease livestock. Don't support LFS that have disease livestock.

I don't know how else to read this but as a slant against LFS's.

Do you want to tell me instead that this was a backhanded way of rooting for the "good LFS's"? If so, OK I'm sure they appreciated it.

I can only add this:
As a hypothetical store owner, one can hardly make money at it anymore...somewhat due to China and progress, but in large measure due to online. More and more customers go for the cheap and lazy way. Revenues get so small that it gets hard to justify being there....then eventually they stop being there.

I live in the DC metro area, which has like 6 million people - not exactly "remote from services" or anything. Yet I have to drive an hour or more to get to a non-petco-type fish store. In it's fishy hey day (~'95-'00) when the population was around half of today - there were as many as 80 LFS's in the area. I'm not sure there are 8 left now, even if you include the extra-remote stores. One supplier here said there are 4 left...and that was before my local store closed. So whatever – lots of people have been without a local store a lot longer. Sooner or later at this rate, that'll be all of us.

Just for perspective think about how little you know about any of the online fish sellers....never seen an employees face, never seen the boss, never seen their tanks on a bad day OR a good day. Have no idea what the "Free Refills" rate is on their live arrival guarantees. Etc. They will always be conveniently excluded from the kind of criticism in this thread - as long as they don't literally stick you with a box of dead livestock.

I sure wish they'd collectively restrict their "free refills" polices to captive bred fish.

Are we still on topic?

 

[becks]

I always use my local lfs unless it's something they don't stock, I maybe able to purchase something slightly cheaper online but I would pay a little more and support my lfs

 

[reeferfoxx]

I don't know how else to read this but as a slant against LFS's.

Do you want to tell me instead that this was a backhanded way of rooting for the "good LFS's"? If so, OK I'm sure they appreciated it.

I can only add this:
As a hypothetical store owner, one can hardly make money at it anymore...somewhat due to China and progress, but in large measure due to online. More and more customers go for the cheap and lazy way. Revenues get so small that it gets hard to justify being there....then eventually they stop being there.

I live in the DC metro area, which has like 6 million people - not exactly "remote from services" or anything. Yet I have to drive an hour or more to get to a non-petco-type fish store. In it's fishy hey day (~'95-'00) when the population was around half of today - there were as many as 80 LFS's in the area. I'm not sure there are 8 left now, even if you include the extra-remote stores. One supplier here said there are 4 left...and that was before my local store closed. So whatever – lots of people have been without a local store a lot longer. Sooner or later at this rate, that'll be all of us.

Just for perspective think about how little you know about any of the online fish sellers....never seen an employees face, never seen the boss, never seen their tanks on a bad day OR a good day. Have no idea what the "Free Refills" rate is on their live arrival guarantees. Etc. They will always be conveniently excluded from the kind of criticism in this thread - as long as they don't literally stick you with a box of dead livestock.

I sure wish they'd collectively restrict their "free refills" polices to captive bred fish.

Are we still on topic?

I know all about driving hours for quality. It's out there. Your business problems are not only fish stores but other retailers as well. It's not just limited to LFS. Our economy has a big problem and doesn't start with me letting people know what to avoid. But to justify skipping some kind of quarantine of a fish to make head way in profits is absurd to me. When you sell a fish, do you tell your customer to purchase 3 other medications and reassure them all will be good with proper quarantine tank? I think that person would second guess their purchase at that point. But, instead we let them go home and infect their tanks. That is what is happening that is why fish die and that is why people get out of the hobby.

 

[Elementalj]

It's already happened in California.. And that was the aquafiers.

The thing people don't think about is that a person is 2/3 water. And then after the person is born, they require X amount of water each day to survive. Now you have a population that displaces water continually, and then grow that population at an exponential rate.

It's going to happen eventually... I think Terra Nova was one of the best shows aside from Soylent Green that captures that timeline..

Guess how often I refer to Soylent Green!?!?!

[emoji13][emoji6][emoji1611]

 

[4FordFamily]

It's not possible to run out of water. We have the same amount of water since the beginning of time. It just changes it forms from lakes, rivers, oceans, aquifers, frozen glaciers, and back into the atmosphere. It's possible that we could pollute all of our freshwater but we will never straight up run out of water. Some places on earth are in drought and some places have too much, but the earth can't just run out of water.

Glad someone said it!

 

[mcarroll]

It's already happened in California.. And that was the aquafiers.

Sadly, that's almost any place that's got a large population living on water pumped from wells....in particular if they've dug into fossil water (or any other type) that doesn't recharge.

Humans mined all the fossil water out of the Sahara region like 1500 years ago...I forget exactly, maybe more. The Valley of Mexico (Mexico City) has been sinking for a long time - same land form down the coast from the central CA valley that's now sinking. Mostly the same reasons, just much longer human habitation.

 

[4FordFamily]

Lets stop bickering, we have differences of opinion and that's OK.

I venture to guess that most if not all of us are passionate about this hobby and the marine life we keep. Lots of good points here. Instead of chiming in about why my local LFS are awful and I wish I had Humblefish style business to support (and happily pay a premium for) I would rather us try to come together.

Another thing I am seeing is that we are starting to take a convoluted situation and make it more convoluted which is a recipe for no solutions or insights. Honesty how long have we been talking about "conversation and comprehensive X reform" for many problems we face? (Think politics for example) Those terms just mean nothing will ever change or happen but we will talk about the problem and have conversations until we are blue in the face and give up.

Admittedly, I don't really have any solutions, but I think the first step is making the problem more simple, and identifying what can be controlled and what cannot, and go from there.

I'm not bright enough to know much about the supply chain and processes.

I will also concede that there are many in this hobby that join for a short time and leave and that learning curve for many is often harmful to sealife distributed to them.

I think the last problem is hopefully addressed in part by this great community. Let's work together folks not against each other. We are in this together!

 

[mcarroll]

Glad someone said it!

People do run out of water, cities do sink. Big shrug cuz the earth can't run out of water....so we keep on as we've been keeping on.

 

[Susan Bates]

If there is a problem with the way the fish are caught and what fish are being caught, then it is better to fix the problem before the governments step in and just shut everything down, this is what has happened here with grey hound racing, for years they where told to clean it up, stop the cruelty and they didn't so now it is stopped altogether, I am sure no one would mind paying a little more to know the fish are caught humanly or breed in captivity, I have only been in this hobby for a short time, and i know what LFS breaks the laws