I'm just going to apologize to OP right now for this happening in her thread. OP, I'm sorry for this happening in your thread. I hope that you can learn something from it. Mmkay; now....(*rubs hands and cracks knuckles*) (also, moderators, please don't lock this thread, I'm doing my best to remain as polite as possible)
1)Well, to me being a little bit infested with ich is like being sorta pregnant. They spend hours in the store and are in front of and around the tanks all day. If I am in the store for 5 minutes and I notice a flashing yellow tang, why don't they? What about the dead fish stuck to the intake that is now bleached white and fuzzy? That doesn't happen overnight. The workers have walked by that same tanke dozens of times and have missed it?
2)Yeah, owning a business is damn hard work. A cursory glance at the most important thing they have? I should not have to point out dead fish that have been dead for days nor fish so badly diseased they are near dead.
3)I disagree here. Removing a bubble or two from a frag plug should not stress even a newly cut frag. If it did, I would not want that frag anyway.
4)As I said in my other post, set up a couple show tanks with live rock, sand, the whole shebang. You don't have to have one of everything! Keeping healthy livestock in clean holding tanks is not going to scare off potential customers. Do you think Divers Den holds fish with sandy bottoms and live rock in thanks? LOL! They hold all sorts of fish for months.
5)If they have all those sorts of pests they are doing it wrong and I would not buy anything out of the tanks that were so infested. It is not impossible to keep pest free corals. Hard to do? Sure, but not impossible.
6)The fact remains I have thousands of dollars in expendable income that I could be spending at the LFS on livestock and I don't. Problem is, they are poorly run. There are a few shops aroound, but none come close to properly keeping livestock. Why should I shop there? The shops near me that have been in business a while also have maintenance contracts that I am sure keeps the storefront from closing. There is a great business plan for you--work one business to keep the other from going under. I'd bet if someone would do as I suggest, they would not need to float the business with maintenance jobs on the side.
How refreshing would it be to walk into a totally clean LFS where all the livestock on display were healthy and all the tanks were clean. I think I would fall right over. Unless of course it was the first day of the grand opening.
7)Unrealistic to ask for healthy livestock that are being kept in clean tanks? That's just dumb. Isn't that what they are in business for? The livestock they carry should be first priority when someone owns a LFS. Period. If they can't or won't maintain the systems, then they should not be in business--and I posit most would not be but for some other business income stream that supports them.
Of course, there are many more yellow tangs, clownfish, corals, inverts to be had. They will just keep ordering more and more and continue to plunk them into the diseased system they can't possibly be bothered to maintain.
8)I don't eat in filthy restaurants and I don't buy anything from filthy fish shops.
9)Oh, and I do have tanks (in my dedicated 24'X48' fish room), several in fact. I tend to order from the source (the actual diver that collects the livestock or the facility that breeds/cultures them).
10)Why do people settle for (and make excuses for) mediocrity?
Starting from point 1...
1) I fail to see how having a little bit of ich is akin to being pregnant. Ich is a parasite. A fetus is not. You have also failed to acknowledge the fact that OP has explicitly stated that at least some of her workers will be high school/college age. Workers who most likely won't care as much about the fish as hobbyists do (something I've already stated). Those workers might be around the fish all day, but they're attention isn't always going to be on all the fish. Reference my previous post on why: they have a ton of other stuff to do.
2) I'll agree that this is wrong. Fish shouldn't be heavily covered in ich, nor be fuzzy fish-looking carcasses on the filter. But a single dead fish here or there? Or a single fish with ich? Worse things have happened. However, the most important asset that OP has stated, is her maintenance job, not the selling of fish. In fact, once a tank is fully stocked, what's going to be the biggest cost? Supplies. Salt. Fish food. Replacement gear. Maybe another tank.
3)Umm...hello, stress=bad. Especially if the animal is already wounded or sick. Both of which are likely after you've made a new frag. You've physically hurt the animal by cutting it, which opens it to infection. Your fingers, when compared to a fish' jaws, are far more clumsy and a hassle. Fish can eat off that algae that threatens the frag, but when you try to brush it off, you end up hurting it. Oh, and while you may not like the frag, another person may have their heart set on it.
4)And like I said in my post, people want to know what their fish will look like in their tank. That means live rock and sand most of the time. They want to know if the fish will hide in their tank (possum wrasse, swissguard basslet, assessors), or if it will perch on the decor (blennies, gobies, hawkfish); if they'll eat it (butterflyfish, tangs, angelfish), or if they'll completely ignore it except as a sleeping place (damselfish, lionfish, anthias). It really sucks when you buy an awesomely shaped Tanaka's possum wrasse, only to find it hiding in the nooks and crannies of your tank the next day, rarely coming out. Oh, and before you say it, people oftentimes don't do as much research as needed before buying.
5) Yeah, keeping corals pest free is hard. It's more hard when you're getting shipments in sometimes 4x a month, and you don't have enough space to properly quarantine your best selling frags. That's why my LFS has fish in the frag tanks, to catch what they don't see at first.
6) Can't type anything without seeming like a complete troll that deserves to be banned.
7) Unrealistic? Yeah. See point 2.You're describing a 100% antiseptic system that just isn't feasible in a business where animals are going in and out all the time. Even with 100% meticulousness, you're going to let in a spore of something sooner or later.
8) I sincerely hope that you're talking about the quality of the fish tanks, and not of the store itself. While cleanliness is nice, what'll you do if you find a store that sells your mythical clean fish, and has sticky floors?
9)Not all of us can pay divers to collect fish for us. Not all of us can go straight to the fish breeder either. Not all of us have the connections for that kind of thing, nor the money either probably.
10)Because your version of mediocrity is everybody else's version of near perfection?
Oh, and if you hate your LFS' so much, then why don't you do something about it, and start your own? You obviously have the connections and the money, and the time to do so, since you have "$1000's of expendable income", can contact divers to get you fish, and take care of a "24' X 48' dedicated fish room'.
Even public aquaria have problems with algae, aiptasia, and other pests as well. So if the big public aquaria, which you would expect to be able to handle such a problem, can't, why would you expect a smaller LFS to do so?
