Around here unfortunately lately I have seen dinoflagellates in every store that I have visited in the past few weeks. I have also had 4 separate customers in the last month either shut down their systems due to dinos or wanting me to tell them how to solve their dino problems after I confirm that it is dinoflagellates under the microscope. It really bothers me to see hobbyists leaving the hobby based on people who either do know better or should know better selling coral infected with dinos. Granted we can save the "it may or may not be a problem based on their tank conditions and biodiversity" arguments for other threads.
Things that I hate and don't think that there is really an excuse for are multiple dead fish in tanks, tanks covered in hair algae, tanks covered in aptasia. I also hate seeing the threads from locals who bought corals that have red bugs, black bugs, nudibranchs, flat worms et cetera. I also hate the local threads or people telling me about bringing home a fish and putting into their display for it to die and take out half the tank with it from ich or velvet or whatever else. Granted I do believe that it is our responsibility as the customer to QT everything unless we are paying a premium for livestock that has already been through QT. I know most people may not agree and think that it is the stores responsibility, but ultimately it is on the customer to do due diligence. It reminds me of a story of two well known staff members right here on this forum. The one gave the other some high end monti frags and after being in the new tank for a little while the receiver realized that they had montipora eating nudibranchs. The giver of the frags never saw a nudibranch because his wrasses were keeping the numbers in check, but put in the new tank without wrasses on the hunt the nudis became apparent. Sometimes the store may know that there is a problem, but more often than not they are employing control measures and may never see an issue that becomes the buyers issue later. So I 100% think that it is on the customer to QT all livestock.
There is one place that sells fish labeled as "Quarantined" that is nothing more than being bought from a wholesaler that says that they hold fish for a week to condition them.
There is another store that sells fish labeled "MAC Certified" which to those that don't know (99% of customers) only means that they were bought from a wholesaler that is certified by the Marine Aquarium Council. The customers think this is some great thing and that the fish are pest and disease free which simply is not the case at all. Granted this is the same store that sells people reef tank setups with fluval strip lights and canister filters and then they want to know why they can't grow Acropora.
It would be awesome to have a local store that sells quarantined and treated fish. I know a lot of people have suggested that, but I do not think that your average customer would want to pay the added costs. I know that some would, but do not think that the average customer would. Then are we willing to pay 50% more, double, triple? I mean what is the lose rate going to be not to mention to do it correctly you are looking at the potential of 6 weeks. I personally would love to have a local place do this though.
We do have a store that I have not mentioned yet that will treat a fish in copper for you at the price of $5 per day per fish which equals out to being $150 for a 30 day copper treatment. That is just for copper, no treatment for internal or external parasite like flukes which working in the industry is by far the #1 thing that I see.
I wish another store in an affluent neighborhood that sells their goods for a premium over the other stores would stop telling everyone that every tank has ich and it's like the common cold and to just buy a UV sterilizer and you will be fine. (same store that I bought a fish that got ich from when I started the hobby). Sorry guys you either introduce it to your tank or you don't. It is a parasite with a defined understood life cycle it is not an air born bacteria or something.
I love the comments about having kid play areas or lounge area with coffee or beer and comfy leather couches. The store that I work at we do have a single lounge chair and a flat screen that plays BRSTV videos all day. While I would love to be able to go to a store to sit around and hang out for hours, and I certainly have customers who do that sometimes in my head I'm just like ok please leave so I can have a cig and clean some tanks or do some water changes or other things than standing there for 3 hours talking about tanks while I have a bunch of things to get done before I close for the day. Granted I do have some awesome customers that bring me lunch or snacks and are more than happy to chit chat outside so I can grab a cig. That is not to even go into the space that these play areas and lounge areas would take away from store floor space that I could have tanks of livestock or dry goods that the store profits from selling.
Most stores in my area have fish and inverts in same system so that if they do ever see fish disease or parasites they have no way of treating the system to eradicate the issue from their system. I will say that is the main reason that I like the store that I work at is the fact that the fish system is stand alone so if I ever see anything the entire system gets treated.
We have one store kind of close to here that has sales all the time, but if he has a good sale he moves all the good stuff to the back room and then instead of being half off the $50 price that the coral was last week it is still half off but the price is now $80, somehow the price went up right before it went on sale. I would rather just have good/cheap prices everyday. Granted sales are psychological marketing hype at it's finest. The live sale is a perfect example of this, don't get me wrong, I too spend way more than I intended just like everyone else.
I think that the perfect store would be to have two fish systems on with lower priced fish that are in fine condition eating and no signs of disease but also a separate system where the fish are full treated but obviously they would have to be priced significantly higher. I would say the same for coral systems. Obviously there are a number of coral that cannot be aquacultured and sometimes you want to buy that crazy colored wild Acro colony to see what it turns into or a Trachy, Scoly, etc. that can be in one system and a separate system that is only pest free aquaculture. Granted as we all know it only takes one wet had or net anything else to ruin the entire plan, but we can envision how awesome that would be. I can tell you that it would be very difficult in a busy store to wash your hands between putting them in multiple systems to keep from cross contamination, but we can dream.
