High dollar fish

[ade]

I must have saw a very rare flame angle at Petland today. I was in there on my way home getting some stuff but not for fish and I walked around to the fish section by habbit. They should not be allowed to buy salt water fish and corals because they do not know how to look after them, anyway I passed a few tanks with base rock and there it was a very nice looking flame angle. Great color,size and looked happy for what it was worth. So I looked for the price tag and there it was a bargin price of $119.
I am not sure on the going rate for flame angles but that can't even be close?
So if you are borded and are passing Petland on 220 go in and look at this fish and complain about their tanks.
Lets try to stop the death of any more fish and corals.

 

[CeaHorseMaShell]

I used to work there for a year, and it is indeed sad. Often times the fish department workers tell the owner what needs to be done to fix the many problems they have. He has never once to my knowledge listened to anything. He doesn't want to get off the money. The employees get fed up and quit.

One time when I worked there the owner was upset because there was a cyano problem. Instead of listening to us tell him how to fix it, he told us to take all the substrait out of all the tanks, (like this would fix the problem) He was actually suprised when cyano started growing on the glass in the bottom of the tanks. So he told us to scrub them out ever morning, so we did, and then we had ugly tanks full of (base) rock with no sand, and floating chunks of cyano. (Big suprise) Then he tells us to put new sand back in the tanks. He still has yet to try anything any of us told him to do and the tanks still look horrible.

By the way Petland runs a lot of copper in their tanks except for the two banks of so-called reef tanks. So don't put any of their water in your tanks.

They will also not let the RVRC post anything in their store. What would it hurt, but its their loss b/c its costing them business.

 

[ade]

The amount of $ he spend on employees doing work on the tanks not fixing the problem he could spend fixing the problem.They don't have any stock in the tanks, to me it would be better to drain the system and start from scratch. I wish that we could all do somthing to help or put a stop to this killing.

 

[CeaHorseMaShell]

I wish he would drain the tanks, throw away the base rock, (which has all been bleached by the way), and start over. It really bothers me that there is copper in the water. If he would just put some live rock in and upgrade his lights (which he buys at Lowes) that would help matters a lot. Then he could put inverts in whatever tank. Next time you're in there feel the side of one of the tanks, or if the top is open, stick your hand on top of the water, it is freezing, they also run their salt level too low, IMO. Once when I worked there he had us fill trash cans full of all the (at the time) live rock and bleach it. He wanted to get rid of the algae.

When I first started working there he installed a huge DI system in the back beside the sump. He thought that running all DI water would fix all of the problems. Even if it would, he didn't let us do water changes often enough because the salt was too expensive (idiot). Don't get me wrong, I like the owner as a person, but he has no business running a saltwater department.

 

[ade]

When you say bleached are you saying been BLEACHED or bleached by the sun? IMO most pet stores use copper and low salinity because of the amount of fish they have come though their store. Low salinity and copper wards against ich. I was taken behind the wall were all the puppies are kept and that was a mess. A UV that hadn't had anew bulb in years and a skimmer that was undersized and had not been cleaned in months. There is your problem. Like I said befor it would be great if we could all do something.

 

[NbMaxx13]

I think the problem is deeper than just the set-up and husbandry.(allthough it is a major contributing factor) The problem is a Dep. Manager who litteraly makes information up and does not give his employees a chance to correct mistakes he has made for years. I worked there for a while w/ another one of the R.C. members and we constantly fought an uphill battle to get the tanks even partly respectable. There are issues w/ acclimation (none) and substrate and copper. Never mind the lighting. The manager has very limited knowledge and has a bad habit of blaming the distributors for fish loss when a bunch of us have gotten our stock from the very same places. Personally I stocked my tanks from thier same suppliers and have yet to have a bad experience. I think if you want to do something , what you could do is ask to speak to Tommy the owner. He is a good guy and very reasonable , it is just that he doesn' t have the knowledge to run a fish department which is why he put someone else in charge , it just happens that he has someone who is stubborn to the point of not being able to allow someone else to tell him he has made mistakes he finds exscuses instead of solutions. I personally had the chance to run the department for 2 months while he was gone , and I had the tanks getting to a point where they looked decent and things were actually surviving and thriving , but once he came back I just simply couldnt spend my time there fighting a losing battle w/ someone who had it thier way only and never thought enough to fix a problem instead of blaming. Fish loss due to poor husbandry and the fact that you cant keep inverts means loss is high w/ means you need to raise the prices. Talk to Tommy if you want to change things explain to him that it would be benificial and profitable to change things and maybe he could take a cue from the many local reef-keepers whose tanks look better than thier own. My 2 cents.

 

[CeaHorseMaShell]

I think I met you once there Eric. I worked there a while before that, under Lorrie not Joe. By the way Joe no longer works there now. Not sure who is the manager. When I worked there Tommy would literally not let Lorrie do anything, but yes the acclimation was also a problem then. I agree that the thing to do would be to talk to Tommy. I'll go with you Ade for group support if you want. Just make sure His wife Cathy isn't there, she really doesn't like to spend any money. Oh, and I did mean BLEACH, as in chlorox. We would fill trash cans with the rock, and pour in the bleach, let it sit for several days, drain it, put in fresh water, and dechlorinate it.

 

[gomd]

Every pet store in Roanoke sucks. Period.

 

[mike68]

yep!

 

[Doc's69]

but there is hope a new one is on the way, more to follow

 

[ade]

WHEN !