Business Idea To Greatly Reduce Disease

[Stuart60611]

I was just posting in the newbie forum about my view on ich, when an idea came to mind. I for one would buy all my fish at a signicantly higher price if the seller would treat all fish for a full 4 week treatment with, for example, curpramine for ich, velvet, etc. (except maybe puffers or tangs, who would be maybe treated with quinine) and a praziquantel med for flukes and then observed for a few weeks thereafter to be certain there are no signs of disease before being sold. LA Drivers' Den seems to do the best job at something close to this by carefully quarantining everything and treating if signs of disease. However, they do not profolatically treat all species, and I have read that people still seem to get fish from them that have health issues too often. Plus, the fish that are available on Drivers' Den are usually of the more expensive or rare variety. An LFS that did this more geared toward the mainstream livestock of the hobby could charge a lot more per fish for this special treatment, and many of us would be happy to pay the premium. Certainly, there could be no guranteee that your fish is being sold to you free from disease. But a guarantee that every fish was treated for the full treatments as described above, whether disease was observed or not, then monitored for a period thereafter to be certain the fish is healthy before being sold.

 

[Steven Pro]

Stores have tried this, but usually go back to business as usual because customers will not pay the premium price for it.

 

[LargeAngels]

Yup, and to truly sell fish that are disease free you can't add anything else to that system for the full treatment, nor cross contaminate from other systems (nest, food, etc.) So then you need to have many seperate systems.

 

[Stuart60611]

Well, maybe it is just me, but it seems that fish being sold recently are suffering from a substantially increasing degree of parasite/disease issues. Although this may have been tried before by some companies, I think, perhaps, the issue should be revisited b/c I think that once an aquarist experiences a parasite/disease problems they would be much more inclined to pay the higher premium associated with this special treatment. I realize that this will be far more onerous for the seller both in terms of time commitment to livestock as well as holding facilities. However, perhaps these additional costs could be paid from charging higher prices. A careful marketing effort done by the seller explaining the liklihood of fish being sold containing some parasite/disease snd the resulting requirements for treatment, lengthy quarantine, and possible death of the livestock in the buyer's main system combined with having the buyer endure a lenghty fallow period in the display which may or may not eliminate the problem would be strong selling points . If packaged well and presented to potential buyers thoroughly explaining the benefits of buying fish treated this way, I think it could indeed sell and in the end perhaps give the seller even larger margins.

 

[LargeAngels]

In the long run there is no substitute for a QT and they aren't very expensive when compared to the fish lost due to lack or improper QT. Many places do a good job to assure the fish are healthy and have recovered some from the shipping stress but it isn't a sure thing.

 

[Stuart60611]

I realize that there is no substitue for quarantine, if nothing else but to give the fish time to adjust. However, many of us, despite quarantining, still manage to get parasites/disease into our displays despite our best efforts to avoid doing so, particularly when you have a system with many fish. This would not gurantee that this does not happen, but I think it would go a long way to making this problem the exception rather than a common occurence. As is common problem here, once you introduce a new fish that allows parasites or disease to go into an established system with many fish, the aquarist is left with the daunting task of having to remove and catch all of the fish from the display which often requires the dismantiling of all the rock work and then quarantining all the fish from the display for a lengthy period in quarantine facilities that are often crampt and inadequately filtered, thereby requiring a high degree of daily maintanence to maintain quarantine water quality. If a seller is able to competantly communicate that reality to potential buyers, I think people would seriously consider paying substantially more for a new fish to substantially reduce the possibility of having to deal with breaking down the display, etc., particularly those who are adding a new fish to an established system with many other fish, expensive corals, etc.

 

[JHemdal]

I think the biggest problem is that despite the level of care given, post-importation mortality rates of many marine fish are very high, and do not drop to reasonable levels until beyond around day 45. A store quarantining their stock that long will have to eat all those losses. These losses can be substantial - up to 100% for some species (tiny green chromis with Uronema) and is routinely above 30% for many fish from Indonesia and the Philippines.

IMO, no quarantine process is 100%, so even if you were to buy post-quarantine fish from a dealer, you would still need a plan "B" if they get sick later on.


Many years ago, when I managed the fish room of a large store, we tried a two-tiered pricing strategy: one price for fully quarantined animals with a guarantee, and a lower price for "out-the-door" fish like most of the other stores were selling. Funny thing - sales for BOTH groups dropped a huge amount! People didn't want to pay the price for the guaranteed animals, and felt that the non-guaranteed ones were "too low in quality"....


Jay