Why are there so many sick fish?????

[domination2580]

100% agree. I live in good ol south dakota, i have 3 stores and all are an hour away. All 3 have sick fish amd try to play it off. Which is why im ring to get a small shop up and running which the fish with be qtd amd all infections treated for. Ill have about 5 tanks to the qt, then 5 more for holding stock. All on seperate systems.

 

[Alanc425]

@Humblefish Its a problem and I for one would pay a premium for a healthy fish. I consider myself a budget reefer and I like many have gone cheap on fish and have had a bad experience. Profit margins and bottom line thinking is not only hurting our hobby but is also a ticking time bomb for individuals that want to end the fish and coral trade all together. Maybe Im going overboard with my way of thinking but other peoples profits have little to no influence on me. I would not accept a deficient product in any other aspect of my life so for me I refuse to buy fish that have not been qt at the lfs. Come to think of it I may never buy another fish from the lfs again. I have 5 lfs in my local area and none qt or even segregate fish. My business will go to the people online that take the time to care for these animals. Once I find one.

LA divers den and Pieces of the Ocean sells pre quarantined fish I believe, if you're willing to pay the premium as you say. Should lower the risk drastically but probably still smart to QT at home.

 

[11cmortarman]

@Alanc425 I will look into them....Thanks

 

[seth&angelle]

I own a LFS in South Louisuana. Granted I'm not in a great location, but I'm only 35 minutes outside of New Orleans and 1.5 hours from Baton Rouge. @Humblefish has mentored me over the years in building quarantine protocols to help me provide the best most healthy fish. We have found great success providing disease free fish. I'm very proud of our progress.

Now here lies the problem. I have 2 quarantine systems in my shop. I bring in small shipments to lessen the chance of getting one fish that can nuke the entire batch. I quarantine for 2 weeks and I move one batch up to retail tanks every week. I'm having such good success after qt that I can't sell them fast enough. I lose less than 1% of the fish after they make it past qt. People say they will pay more to purchase heathy quarantined fish, but they don't. People always cut corners and go the cheap route, or buy out of convenience. My fish are actually pretty competitive with most market prices and are sometimes better! I'm spending a heck of a lot more than any of my competitors to ensure I provide healthy fish, and I can't sell them. People always have an excuse like you're too far or you just don't have that exact fish I'm looking for. Then people say why don't you special order? I will to an extent, but most of the time special order item are almost impossible to get through quarantine alive. I don't want to purchase a fish that I know will die and I end up out the money plus it's not right. Sometime the fish they want isn't available to me at the time, and they buy online anyways.

So, what do I do? Do I continue to spend more than I make to provide healthy fish? Do I go out of business? Do I stop selling fish all together? There aren't enough customers who care enough to buy from the lfs that goes above and beyond. Remember we are a small community (here on R2R) and we probably don't represent a fraction of the consumers out there, and most consumers or lfs don't care like we do. I'll tell you now I don't quarantine because I think I'll make more money because I've proven it not to be true. I do it because I care about the animals and it kills me to kill them when I know I can do something to prevent it.

Rant over

 

[11cmortarman]

That is very respectable and I appreciate your love for the animals. I myself would die for an lfs as dedicated as you are but unfortunately I do not have one in my local area. Do you happen to have a website. I would love to support your business.

 

[11cmortarman]

@seth&angelle It sucks when all Lfs get lumped into stereotypes. All I can do is speak from personal experience. I love supporting the local fish stores when I can but I have taken a personal stand against buying mistreated and sick fish in my area. Unfortunately that only leaves me to buy fish online at businesses that practice good qt procedures. I feel for the rock in a hard place situation that you are in and i'm sorry that you have to deal with these issues. You stated that people always cut corners and go the cheap route and I feel that is not true. Just like you don't like to be stereotyped as a business owner I do not like to be stereotyped as a consumer. There are people that would buy quality at a higher price, but I don't own a business and have no right to tell you how to run yours. Im just not going to settle for a lesser product than I feel that I deserve is all that I was trying to say. I hope everything works out for you and thanks for doing what you do.

 

[Humblefish]

@seth&angelle I feel your pain, my brother.

 

[Lionfish Lair]

The LFS can't properly QT fish because every time a new fish is added to their system, the QT time restarts. None of the fish would ever come out of QT if you kept adding and restarting the clock. What do you do when you get shipments in every day? Where do you put the fish? You couldn't put them in the same system as the fish presently in QT in the store. Then those new fish need to be separated out for compatibility. Then the next day you get another handful.

It has nothing to do with insurance. You have to eat the cost of the fish loss up to a certain point, like deductibles. They'll cover anything above a predetermined amount. Trust me, it's much better for someone to buy the fish than lose it in the retailer's tank.

Any store who says they QT, you need to peek in the back of the store and see if they have bunches and bunches of individual unlinked tanks. If not, it's not a proper QT. Some watch them before they sell them, but that's not a true QT.

 

[Humblefish]

Any store who says they QT, you need to peek in the back of the store and see if they have bunches and bunches of individual unlinked tanks.

^^This is what @seth&angelle does. All QT systems are in the back of the store and fish move in batches to the retail system only after successfully completing QT. No new fish are added to the QT systems until the current batch has been moved out.

 

[seth&angelle]

@seth&angelle It sucks when all Lfs get lumped into stereotypes. All I can do is speak from personal experience. I love supporting the local fish stores when I can but I have taken a personal stand against buying mistreated and sick fish in my area. Unfortunately that only leaves me to buy fish online at businesses that practice good qt procedures. I feel for the rock in a hard place situation that you are in and i'm sorry that you have to deal with these issues. You stated that people always cut corners and go the cheap route and I feel that is not true. Just like you don't like to be stereotyped as a business owner I do not like to be stereotyped as a consumer. There are people that would buy quality at a higher price, but I don't own a business and have no right to tell you how to run yours. Im just not going to settle for a lesser product than I feel that I deserve is all that I was trying to say. I hope everything works out for you and thanks for doing what you do.

I didn't feel as though you were putting all LFS into one category. I know I do my part. My point is simply that the consumer that you are doesn't reflect the majority of consumers. There aren't enough consumers like you to make what I'm doing profitable.

 

[11cmortarman]

@Lionfish Lair Im not on a witch hunt to bash local fish stores. It seems like @melypr1985 and @seth&angelle are doing the best they can. Seriously stating that something can't be done is a little far fetched. I know that Im not a reef squad member and Im just a regular joe nobody but you are implying that any store that states they qt are automatically lying.

 

[Humblefish]

@11cmortarman I think @Lionfish Lair was just trying to point out the difficulty and obstacles a LFS must overcome to provide true QTd fish.

 

[Lionfish Lair]

What I did for our systems was each rack would have a shared sump. When a fish needed to be QT'd we were going to turning that tank off from the rest of the system and it would have it's own little individual closed system with an airline. If a fish got sick, the same thing would happen. They do the best they can, but it's next to impossible to expect much more than the regular shops are already providing. There are some that suck, but most do the best they can.

 

[seth&angelle]

There aren't enough consumers like you to make what I'm doing profitable.

After saying this, I was thinking, That's the great thing about this community and R2R. The more we make people aware of the animals health and how to better take care of them, maybe what I do can become profitable in the future. Just think about it. What's the average time people stay in the hobby? How many people are like us who have stuck with it for the long haul? The people who stay short term likely have had bad experiences or failures. Maybe one of those failure was keeping fish alive? If they had known about quarantine, or what to look for when purchasing a healthy fish maybe they'd stick around. All we can do is educate new hobbyist so that they can skip the failure part. Less failure means less dead fish.

 

[Untamedrose]

I havnt had any real issues(one minor internal parasite, treated gone yaa) with my current tanks fish. no ick, no velvet, no deaths besides one DOA ....knocks on wood... (course other tanks other fish who hasnt had a round with ick, like falling off a horse. noob or a liar paraphrasing my grandfather there)

But it "Feels" like the whole thing has gotten worst as far as diseases since I got back in, I dont have any hard evidence other then I have seen others comment the same but feels are very finicky.
Is it getting worst? and is there a Reason it's gotten worst in the past 3 years or so?
Cause logically so many other things have improved in the industry in the past 10-15 years...one would think this issue would too.

 

[Untamedrose]

After saying this, I was thinking, That's the great thing about this community and R2R. The more we make people aware of the animals health and how to better take care of them, maybe what I do can become profitable in the future. Just think about it. What's the average time people stay in the hobby? How many people are like us who have stuck with it for the long haul? The people who stay short term likely have had bad experiences or failures. Maybe one of those failure was keeping fish alive? If they had known about quarantine, or what to look for when purchasing a healthy fish maybe they'd stick around. All we can do is educate new hobbyist so that they can skip the failure part. Less failure means less dead fish.

I'm not in the reefing/fish keeping biz....but small biz owner. Finding your target audience, is hard enough. And it sounds like your looking for a very specific one....one locally your basically going to have to create.

I know that was very blah d blah no duh but How biz advice....Trying to be supportive.

 

[11cmortarman]

Im not trying to understating the fact that QT your fish at home is not important. I hate to sound almighty and brash but the quality of the majority of livestock offered to good paying customers is horrible. I feel that If more people would just take a stand then quality stores as mentioned above would shine. But who am I kidding Im throwing a grain of sand at a problem that I think is bigger than a lot of people realize. @Lionfish Lair I meant no disrespect as I like to have respectful healthy discussions regarding the future of our hobby. I understand that quarantined fish at the lfs level is a hard problem to mitigate but If thats what it takes for consumers to receive at least healthier fish that have a better chance to survive in the end customers quarantine procedures I feel thats what needs to happen.

 

[11cmortarman]

If one person can come across this thread and realize that he or she is not getting the quality of livestock that should be getting and takes the time and go with a store that does then Me being up at 1230 at night on a work night would be worth it for me.

 

[seth&angelle]

I havnt had any real issues(one minor internal parasite, treated gone yaa) with my current tanks fish. no ick, no velvet, no deaths besides one DOA ....knocks on wood... (course other tanks other fish who hasnt had a round with ick, like falling off a horse. noob or a liar paraphrasing my grandfather there)

But it "Feels" like the whole thing has gotten worst as far as diseases since I got back in, I dont have any hard evidence other then I have seen others comment the same but feels are very finicky.
Is it getting worst? and is there a Reason it's gotten worst in the past 3 years or so?
Cause logically so many other things have improved in the industry in the past 10-15 years...one would think this issue would too.

I believe it has gotten worse. My theory of why it has gotten worse is simple. I personally blame the wholesaler. I have 3 wholesalers that I buy from with good to great success. One in particular is almost flawless. Anyways, I believe the problem is the fast turn around with a majority of the wholesalers. They will get fish in and turn around and ship them out the same day. They mix fish from all over in the same systems. How do they know there is a problem? They don't keep a majority of the fish long enough to know. There is never a reset. When a disease like velvet or a bad gram negative shows up, you have to stop all progress and shut it down. They never stop progress. If they stop progress they lose money. Once the fish is out of their facility, it's not there problem.

Part of my rant applies to the good wholesalers. The good wholesalers who take the risk to provide better quality fish have greater cost, and the retailers don't buy from them because they cost more for the conditioned fish. Buying conditioned fish that cost more make the retail cost go up and then it too expensive for the consumer. Do we see the vicious cycle? In the end it's all about money, and it starts from collection all the way to the hobbyist.

 

[11cmortarman]

@seth&angelle you make a great point that It starts with the wholesalers and not once have I seen 1 major fish distributor come onto r2r and enlighten us about the crazy ick and velvet outbreak that is obviously rampant right now. Maybe I missed it but then again Im probably asking for too much. This forum is a very powerful tool that I really think innovates thought and Ideas but at the end of the day If they don't want to keep up with the best reef communities that are committed to this hobby long term then it is there loss.

Again thanks to @Humblefish, @melypr1985, @Lionfish Lair, and @seth&angelle I appreciate what you give to this hobby and community and respect that for a lot of people this hobby is what they use to put food on the table. I appreciate that there are businesses that don't cut corners and do what they can for the animals even if it means more expense for them and less profit to provide quality fish for the consumer.