<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9882406#post9882406 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Rogger Castells
I couldn't disagree more, Being in the business long, seeing fish & corals being killed, dealing with inexperience hobbyist and so on gives you choices, you either become a dedicated store owner that takes the time to ensure that people understand what you've learn through experience and share your knowledge with the customer every time you can.
yes I agree and disagree with your post.
The problem that I see with new hobbyist and even experienced ones is the tendency to go out and buy all the wrong equipment, get the cheapest crap they can to do a setup, and then save the bulk of their cash to buy expensive demanding animals that the equipment and setups just can't support even though they were told from Day one to not buy that stuff and were given a roadmap to create a proper setup with the proper equipment. So after getting the advice on how to build a good tank they goto someone else's store or hop on the internet buy everything they were told not to, then they come back to the store to buy the corals, ***** about stuff being too expensive, and then complain a few months later all their corals are dying.
I've seen over and over people who cut every corner when it comes to buying their skimmers, lighting, and don't care that their tank turnover is half of where it should be, spend $100 on a crappy RO system that barely works or even worse get RO from a store and not bother to make sure the RO water is actually any good cause little do they know the store is using a 2 stage filter that hasn't had a filter changed on it in 2 years of heavy use. Worse yet is how people buy seawater from guys that deliver, and when you ask the guys that sell the seawater their criteria from pulling water from the inlet is "If it looks cloudy I won't pull it".. and then with a few months or a year the tank is so overrun with hair algae and other pests they simply throw everything out and start over.
I don't get in these people's faces and wave my finger at em, but I don't run a store, if i did, it would definately **** me off... I do realize that newbies will ALL make the same mistakes and kill stuff over and over until they either quit the hobby or figure out they need a good setup and good paramaters before chucking everything they can buy up into their tank. I made similar mistakes, and luckily I only killed a few softies like shrooms and leathers in my beginner days, and after buying the same setup 3x over I finally learned not to cut corners cause it just ends up costing more in the end anyways.
Scott is my friend, and yes, his customer service sucks, all I am saying is I can understand it. That being said, he ran the biz as a hobbyist first and opening to the public was an afterthought for him. If you did get past the initial bad customer service and talked to him you would have been all the better for it as a person and a hobbyist.
