jeff@zina.com
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In order for a species to sustain a population, every female must produce another female in her lifetime. For most species, this means something like 1 in 1,000 live to maturity. Kinda like WalMart. 
Jeff
Jeff
Death at Walmart
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fauxjargon
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Well, I can only guess at what mortality happens between fish farm and transshipper - but at the LFS I work for we have 5-20% mortality or so on new fish. ORA saltwater fish always do extremely well - last shipment of ORA fish, there were 0 losses out of 30+ fish, mostly clownfish and a few dottybacks. Typical ORA mortality for us is usually 5% or so - so basically one dead fish per shipment.
As far as our system of keeping fish alive: We use stock tanks for both FW and SW. Six 40 breeders share a sump. Our method for keeping fish alive in our shop is simple: Water changes, sufficient, appropriate, quality food and and use of copper and antibiotics only when actually necessary. A chain LFS that buys from the same suppliers as us (same sizes most of the time, too) has much higher mortality throwing new arrivals into polluted medication laced water.
We get ich outbreaks on a very occasional basis. Usually, the new arrivals in a system get ich, fish that have settled into the store in the same water do *not* get ich despite no UV sterilizers or prophylactic medication in water.
We copper the tanks and the fish get better quickly - we keep our tanks as hot as the fish are happy in in order to speed up the life cycle of diseases to make treatment work faster and symptoms appear sooner so that we can treat the fish.
The reality is that
1) Fish have immune systems just like we do. A healthy fish can live in water containing common aquarium pathogens without getting sick.
2) Medication is bad for fishes immune systems. Although most quality medication is undoubtedly worse for the organism causing disease, putting healthy fish into medicated water is counterproductive. This is a very common practice at chain LFS.
3) Fish need energy and nutrition to fight disease. Flake food (even quality stuff, not Hagen/Tetra garbage) is inexpensive compared to fish or medication at wholesale prices. In addition to flake food we feed a mix of bloodworms, brine shrimp and shellfish to fish that require it. We try and make sure all our fish get a good feed of brine shrimp once a week for the intestinal health benefits of the brine shrimp.
We have nori for when we have SW fish which require it.
4) Good water quality improves fishes immune systems and therefore their resistance to disease. 50%+ water changes per week in freshwater. Saltwater gets a lot less due to the expense involved, but nitrates stay below 10-15 ppm. Stock levels are also much lower in SW than FW for us.
5) Antibiotic resistant bacteria. Our competitors culture antibiotic resistant bacteria by keeping tanks consistently dosed with antibiotics and overstocked with fish. We very rarely treat with antibiotics and use copper and salt (where appropriate). We have 60x40 breeder, 20x15 gallon, 2x90 gallon, 3x130 gallon and 2x150 gallon and have used antibiotics only 3 times in the past year. On 37 independent systems all of which are continuously in use.
6) Segregating connected systems by temperature and water chemistry - so that we can keep our live bearers happier with small doses of salt, ect... and keep our barbs and danios slightly cooler (The air temperature in the store makes keeping tanks below 22-23 C impossible with out a chiller, but we try).
Our tanks consistently have undetectable ammonia and nitrite and below 20 ppm nitrate - lower for saltwater (We do not do corals, we mostly only sell saltwater fish and less expensive invertebrates (hermits, cleaner shrimp, peppermint shrimp, snails)).
Sometimes supply-side issues affect things too. This year, tiger barbs have had typical mortality rates - last year, no matter what we did, we had 50%+ mortality in tiger barbs.
OTOH, we had less than 10% on a shipment of green neons - risky fish to bring in. Discus are one of our consistently bad fish for mortality - 50% is typical.
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fauxjargon
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Well, I would be very interested to know at what stage in life mortality happens in fish, ultimately each fish should only produce one other fish which lives to sexual maturity. So for a tetra that might make it a year or so in the wild and maybe produce several hundred to a thousand eggs over that period, the survival rate would be very low.
Under aquarium conditions, clownfish can produce 1000+ eggs per month per pair - so if you have a spawning pair in a fish tank, you are killing OVER 1000 NEMOS PER MONTH. Not that this is in any way wrong, just fun to think about.
Marine pelagic fish like Tuna might have survival odds of less than 1 in a million.
kingfisherflesh
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Already on this bandwagon.
Some walmarts are better than others.
This is just sad.
Yes billion dollar companies are ruined by management.
:debi:
:debi:
Wow, whats with the hate against walmart. It is the most successful business the world has ever known, and its an American company. Which of the executives is a redneck. Employs 1.4 million Americans at an average hourly rate somewhere north of $10.50 an hour. Why should we boycott and kill all these jobs?
Sorry I don't really hate Walmart, it's just a dirty store with dirty people. But considering that Walmart headquarters is in the middle of nowhere, I can speculate that most of them there are rednecks. Maybe they have more money, but they're still hillbillies. Oh and if someone doesn't believe me, check out peopleofwalmart.com
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Most of the people that work at the home office dont come from Arkansas. That is a pretty racist statement. People of walmart are customers, not employees.
I agree, but I wonder if they actually make money on the livestock. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the livestock is actually a loss for them, but it's only there to help sell dry goods. But I'm just guessing.
I remember about thirty years ago Woolco was the same way. Their tanks were horribly maintained. They also sold some very sad looking parakeets.
Closed. This is an incredibly juvenile and asinine comment.
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