a conversation about LFS

[JNye]

Did you really figure out the fish waste daily in grams and then got fake poop and fed it to your tank?

Thats pretty hard core.

Indeed! Dude this guy performed a necropsy on his chromis! I think he's a mad scientist.

 

[not ecooper]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12245600#post12245600 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bigevill1
my hippo tang has an infection on him that came from somewhere. He has been dealing with it for at least 3 months now. Sometimes it looks better, and sometimes it looks worse. He eats like a horse though. I really suck at this whole fish tank expert thing.

Have you thought of taking him to someone who can give him a shot of antibiotics?

I could do it, but I don't live in Indiana anymore. I do, however, know someone who can...

 

[bigevill1]

at this point he is doing better. A good balanced diet with garlic and vitamins seems to have helped.

 

[pescadero]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12247420#post12247420 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by poo-tang
Indeed! Dude this guy performed a necropsy on his chromis! I think he's a mad scientist.

Scientist? Yes. Mad? Come on! OK, maybe Mad About Fish.

Its not as if all of this stuff is all THAT complicated, especially if you took a few bio or chem courses in college. as it turns out, there's some really good info out there for the hobbyist if anyone's interested in learning it. there's a lot of good info in that Diseases of Fish book by Noga that I mentioned in the Ich thread. you can view a lot of the book online in the Google book library. like Joe said, embrace the web!

IME when you have a disease in your tank, it really pays to get an accurate idea of what you're adtually dealing with, so that you don't end up taking the typical blind man's approach of shotgunning the problem with broad spectrum antibiotics. Without an accurate diagnosis you're just guessing, and in a situation like that antibiotics can do more harm than good. to get a clue about what's going on all that you need is a microscope, and that changes the situation from guessing about why your fish have died to to having a pretty good idea what's wrong with them and what to do about it. that kind of approach is really helpful if you have a catastropic die-off like i had with the bad shipment of chromis.

 

[pescadero]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12247396#post12247396 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by poo-tang
Seaolife, I agree with you 100% about the internet out competing with LFS and such, I used to look at this as a bad thing too, but like they say if you can't beat em join em. We can't stop the internet. Embrace it. If only the best LFS's survive fine. Kurt and Jimmy will be the only source for great livestock in NWI, we'll see. Fine, whatever the market can support it will, its capitalism. I still buy livestock as stated before, but dry goods? why bother, good LFS's don't even bother stocking dry goods properly except for themselves/new tank set-ups and such.

Last month I had to buy some stuff at an LFS. Let's look over the numbers:

LFS:
13.99 bottle of amquel
36.99 stealth heater
36.99 stealth heater
06.16 sales tax
--------------------------
94.13 total

now let's compare that to the price that i would have paid at DFS:

DFS:
06.29 bottle of amquel
16.49 stealth heater
16.49 stealth heater
----------------------------
39.27 total

look at the numbers: the same stuff that cost $94.13 at the LFS costs $39.27 via the internet. The difference is $54.86. Come on! Thats over 50 dollars! The LFS price is 2.4 times more expensive than the internet price. FIFTY DOLLARS! If that's not enough incentive to modify my purchasing behavior then I don't know what is.

its the same way for Instant Ocean: $38 to $50 at the LFS, $29.59 online. with flat-rate shipping charges, the cost of shipping for each item can become neglegible.

the LFS need to develop a more competitive pricing model or they're going to perish. like everyone else, they need to learn to adapt to a world that is changing around them. their industry is no different than any other. somehow though, they managed to miss out on the idea to "get with the 90s."

 

[steele73]

what am did I get myself into. I was guess work for me getting my salinity right.