ATTN: LFS employees

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How long would you shop at a store that made you take and pass a test before they allowed you to buy something? You can hope people know, but you can't keep a little notebook with what each customer is allowed to buy based on their latest test scores.

So sir, I see you picked out a yellow tang, nice choice by the way. I'm looking at your folder and I don't see a completed tang quiz. Just take a seat and fill this out and I'll be back with you as soon as I'm through helping this young lady. I'll get it graded as fast as possible because I know you're in a hurry. If you pass, we'll get the fish bagged and ready to go.

You have to sell them what they want, bottom line. If you aren't willing to do that you have no place in the retail world. Open a pet adoption agency and run background checks on clients, but stay out of my stores. I choose what I buy, not you
 
I have to disagree with your position that a retail store has to sell anyone anything they want. Having been on both sides of the issue, I have to say that sure, you choose what to buy. However, since a LFS is selling live animals, it has a duty IMO to make sure those animals aren't going to suffer. A smart owner will hire the smartest people he or she can, train them as best he or she can, and empower them to make some decisions in his or her absence.

So, if a person comes in and mentions they want to toss a powder blue in a 20 gallon long, it's the LFS employee's duty to tell that person not to buy that particular fish, and to suggest something else more appropriate to the size tank.

I think to raise the spectre of a tang quiz is a bit of a red herring, if I may make a pun :)
 
Considering how often people complain on these boards about the LFS selling something they have no business selling or "letting" a customer walk out of the store with a new 20 gallon aquarium, uncured live rock, a lawnmower blenny, a sohal tang, and an anemone, I think generally people do expect the LFS employee to at least make some effort to make sure the person buying the animals is putting them in a good home.

I'm very lucky that my LFS is a very good one (Phishy Business). They are fairly familiar with my main tank set up since I am in there regularly. Recently I bought a large pair of tomato clowns, and when they were bagging them up, they made sure the fish would not be put in a tank with anything else since they would kill the other fish. I did know that and had a separate tank set up only for them, but I appreciate that they asked anyway.
 
i'm in the same boat as michellejy, i live in cenrtal ohio also, so i'm a regular at phishy as well. the key is to find out about the customers tank before they decide what fish they want. that way they decide on fish that will do well in there tank. you can't have them pick out 17 fish, then while you're bagging them look at the customer and say, you aren't stupid are you? it doesn't work. it has to start with small talk. find out about their tank, seem interested, and be polite. if you are being friendly and are actually interested you'll get alot farther than if you are just playing 20 questions and grilling them about their setup.

It's people that don't care and just want the sell that the hobby doesn't need.
 
You can suggest and you can try to educate, but are you going to flat refuse to sell them something if they insist they want it anyway? Do that enough times and you can let the next owner deal with it, you'll be out of business.
 
in a short answer, YES refuse to sell them something that will die in their care.

you can't just say uh, you're too dumb, i can't sell you this fish.

calmly and politely explain the reason that the fish wouldn't do well in their system. if they get upset, explain that you are not doing this to upset them or anger them. you are worried for the health of the fish. explain to them improvements they could do or if their tank needs to cycle or if it's just too small, but do it with out trying to sell them something else. offer then a free water sample test offer then any advice they will take. give them forums they can go to and better educate themselves about what is required in a salt water aquarium.

if you don't care enough about the fish to find out if they have a suitable home then you are in the wrong business.

i understand that some fish are going to die from disease, bad luck, etc. but fish dying for no good reason it's just unnessesary
 
Have you ever walked into a fish store and thought, I know more about fish than the guy working here? It happens a hundred times a day. Suppose you tell the employee you want a lionfish and after asking a few questions about your tank, he decides you aren't up to giving the fish the proper care and suggests a damsel. You tell the man that no, you want a lionfish and he says sorry, I can't sell you one, it wouldn't be in the fish's best interest, and offers to show you something in the goldfish department. That would be your last time in the store, guaranteed.
 
I do occasionally feel that way. However, if you've done your proper homework, you and the LFS employee ought to be on the same page as each other. If you're a responsible fish keeper, you'll realize if your tank is way to small or if you don't have the proper tankmates, or whatever. As a responsible fish seller, he or she ought to realize if you can't take care of the animal properly. If you haven't done your homework before coming in, well that's not the LFS' fault.

To respond to the general thrust of your argument, I disagree that you will be out of business simply because in my experience there are far more people who are capable of taking care of livestock properly than not, and if they aren't most of those are smart enough to keep their mouths shut.
 
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As far as worrying about a fish dying and having such high morals about proper care, look at your tank, Do you only feed shrimp that died of natural causes to your tank? Did the silversides in that frozen pack volunteer for active duty? I supposed the krill lined up and waited to be netted? I see articles all the time on how to kill aptasia, dinos, flatworms, etc. Have you ever had a crab eating one of your rare sps corals and killed it? Who gets to decide what is worth saving and what dies? Just because you think it's pretty and desireable does it get to live? Does it really make alot of sense to yell save the tang, while feeding it brine shrimp? Have you ever bought a feeder goldfish and actually fed it to something? It's only the pretty or desireable things that people preach about saving, I've never heard anyone complain about the care and feeding of planaria
 
do you think the guy that bought the 17 fish is ever coming back? would you rather make that one sale, have the fish die, the guy come back and get ****ed at you, have to deal with the guy angry that the fish died, tell him no refund, and have him never come back?

OR

get the person to tell you their setup, you tell them you can't sell the fish, you expain why they understand and you guide them somewhere else or help them with their setup.
they may also storm out and never come back
they may storm out and come back when they cool off.

either way in the 2nd scenario you aren't throwing fish out into the parking lot.

odds are good if the fish store employee is not smart enough to be telling people what should and shouldn't go into their tanks he doesn't care.

if the LFS has dumb employees that are telling people what they should and shouldn't have i don't think they would be in business very long.

i think most hobbyist expect the employees at the big chain stores to be ignorant about the hobby and are ready for that if we decide to go into one of those stores, but at a hobby specific LFS they should know what they are talking about well enough to help people out and prevent the needless killing of fish.
 
First off, if an animal is bred to be food, I believe that we have a responsibility to ensure that said animal is raised and harvested in such a manner as to reduce suffering in life and death. I feel that way about the food I eat, too, not just my tank. I also kill weeds in my yard -- I don't have compunctions about killing pests in my tank who lack the natural predators that would otherwise kill said pests off in the ocean.

Just as we push for humane and environmentally friendly harvesting techniques for display fish/corals, or even push for an entirely aquacultured hobby, so should we push for humane treatment of livestock once they are in our or an LFS' care. The whole point about telling someone "no" is that throwing (for example) a huge tang in a small tank is inhumane treatment of that animal. I think it boils down to the fact that some people just have a problem with being told "no."

Should a gas station attendant sell gas to a guy after they find out he wants to light a house on fire? Of course not -- I don't think that anyone would argue that person has to "sell them what they want, bottom line." A store selling live animals has, IMO, a responsibility to do their best to ensure the animals go to a good home where they will be treated in a humane manner.
 
the difference between the death of fish that were sold to some one incapable of caring for them and "feeder" fish or silversides and things like that is one is being killed and flushed or thrown away and the other is being used as fod for other living things.

i'm not saying that every fish should be kept alive at all cost. if i were saying that i wouldn't have a fish tank and i would be telling you to put your fish back in the ocean.

What im trying to say is fish shouldn't have to die because a lfs employee doesn't care and won't put the time in to explain the hobby to someone who doesn't know.

Why did those fish die? either because the guy was a jerk and wanted to put them in fresh water to see if they could live or because he didn't know what he was doing. the first example can't be helped some people are idiots. the second is what im trying to say shouldn't happen. educate the buyers
 
This is a great thread. I've been reading it for a long time. We all have our own points of view. Can we just get back on subject? I would hate for a mod to have to step in.
 
Okay, since I contributed to derailing the topic, I'll help get it back on topic. :)

I overheard this at the LFS:

Customer: "I like the look of that coral. Will it work in my tank?"
LFS Employee: "What kind of lighting do you have?"
Customer: "I don't know. It's the $700 kind."

Unfortunately, I overheard this because the customer was my husband. :lol:
 
Look, it seems like everyone here is taking extreme positions on the subject. I worked at a LFS for 2.5 years and I have handled a situation similar to the one that started this argument multiple times.

As a LFS employee, I felt like that you had an obligation to both the customer and (obviously) to your employer. First, I felt it was important to build a relationship with your customers. Not only does it ensure that when you sell them a fish, you know where it is going and the ability of the particular customer to care for the animal, it is also good for you because as their tanks get better, eventually they will come in and ask for you only.

On the other hand, you often get people that come into the store that think that they know more than you. These people treat you with disdain, distrust, and often contempt. It is VERY easy to sell them whatever they demand, knowing that it will just be a waste of their money (it serves them right for being jerks, right?).

But, this is not good for business, and it is not good for the customer. IME, people who keep aquariums love to talk about their aquariums to other hobbyists. So, I would always approach these distrusting people from the perspective of wanting to "learn" about their setups. Once you being to build a little bit of a relationship with the customer, they will often realize that you aren't a dunce and will take your advice.

There are always those few customers that aren't going to listen to you no matter what you do. The decision about what to do in these instances is really one for your boss. If he says sell the fish, you don't have much of a choice. I for one, had an owner that knew I knew what I was talking about and would let me do as I pleased. I would just flat out refuse to sell fish to people.

Whoever said above that most customers know what they are talking about is nuts. I worked in a fish specific store with a few reptiles thrown in for good measure. I bet I helped 50,000 unique customers in the time I worked there. Of that number, significantly less than 100 of them were truly and fully educated aquarists.

I hope this will end the argument and help get the thread back on topic.

Edit: Others posted pleas to get back on topic while I was writing this manifesto.
 
OK back on topic then :)

I did work at a shop in college that did mostly freshwater. About that time Finding Nemo came out, and like many others I got very tired of guys bringing in their daughters in looking for a Nemo and Dory, and getting mad when I told them we didn't carry them. Like we were a toy store and should have all the Nemo accessories or something.
 
So I've got a couple stories that happened within 5 minutes of each other at one of my LFS.

A couple ladies walk in looking to buy a few things, one looks into a frag tank and asks for a frogspawn, the store owner bags it up and tells her where to place it, etc... as she's about to pay for it she asks what kind of lighting it needs and he tells her she would probably want to have T5s or metal halides. Confused out of her mind she asks if it will do well in a 10-gallon. He says as long as she has enough flow and light it will be fine, she then tells him it's for a friend, turns out she's using one of those 10-gallon kits you use for things such as goldfish. Long story short she says, "oh heavens no, I don't want that stupid plant, why would a plant need that much light?"

Next lady behind her asks him which kind of fish will be good in a 10-gallon. He tells her a single damsel would work for a beginner, but she would probably want a couple shrimp gobies. He then asks her what she has in there, how much sand/LR and stuff. She says she's got 3 or 4 damsels, she can't remember and wants to know which he can recommend to her. He says she's overstocked and she shouldn't put anything else in there, if anything she should take a couple fish out. She tells him that she realizes there are probably fish he can't recommend but wants to know what she can put in there. They go back in forth with him telling her that she's got too much of a bioload in her tank and that it will most likely crash. Long story short again, he bags up a domino damsel for her, little does she know...

Not saying all customers are like this, but this one gave me a really good laugh, but it saddened me because it was just a bunch of ornery old ladies who thought that the life and death of these animals was secondary to the cost. Although what he did with the domino was kinda... mean.
 
He sold her a dead fish?

He mind as well just sold her a live one. For all he knows the damsel could have been fine in her tank. Until it grew up died or killed the other ones..
 
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