Eric and Kevin:
Your points are well-taken, and yes, the thread is directed at the industry as a whole but with a particular emphasis at LA. The reason I have emphasized LA so much in my posts is that they are as you describe perhaps the "best" on-line fish vendor, and the leading voice in the industry. LA has made such an effort to paint itself as a responsible company that sells the healthiest livestock in the industry and a leader in pet education relied upon by consumers, researchers, and accademia that I believe that this company needs to practice what it preaches in terms of the minimum tank size information it provides to the general public. Moreover, I have chosen to focus my points toward LA because they imo have gone way beyond just being a vendor of fish and other livestock, but they now serve as a primary source for aquarium husbandry information. As such, their minimum tank size information has a much higher level of credability with many who read this information and much more so than other competing vendors. Furthermore, because of their vast amount of knowlege and experience in aquarium husbandry, I find particularlly troubling some of the minimum tank size information LA provides because I feel that no company with their level of experience and knowledge truly believes that such information is accurate or complete, but they, nevertheless, continue to post such information for the innocent public to rely upon.
Your point about LA selling to much more highly inexperienced hobbyists as opposed to more experienced hobbyists is one of the points that I have been trying to make throughout this thread. These inexperienced hobbyists will, imo, often get mislead by the minimum tank size information posted and incorrectly make a fish purchase relying thereupon because they have no reason to challenge this information when provided by such an industry leader, such as LA. I do believe that this greatly contributes to fish mortality in the hobby. For example, someone who keeps a fish in a system which is way too small often also has bioload problems, aggression or other behavorial problems, disease/parasite problems, and a variety of other problems which can lead to the death of the fish and/or the inexperienced hobbyist loosing interest which then often results in the death of livestock. Keeping a fish in an appropriately sized tank is one of the most important ways to avoid premature fish fatalities and allow the hobbyist to enjoy the system rather than view it as a problem. Minimum tank size information is not like other general husbandry information and is one of the most material items to keep in mind when keeping a fish. Yes, you could attach many pages of description concerning how to properly maintain a given fish being sold, but minimum tank size information is usually much more important than much of this other information and does not require a lot of pages to accurately and completely describe. Moreover, providing inaccurate or materially incomplete minimum tank size information, particularlly from a highly reputable source, such as LA, is far worse imo than providing no such information because inexperienced hobbyists will rely upon this information and not seek to determine this information accurately from other sources.
In terms of what is the appropriate minimum tank size for a given fish, and how can this be determined in some method other than pure subjective means is still an issue that is being explored in this thread. At this point, I think it is fair to state that perhaps using tank dimensions as a unit of measurement as opposed to gallons makes the best sense. Moreover, although no mechanism for determining minimum tank size for a given fish via purley objective means has been fully developed here, I think it is fair to state that most can agree that a particular tank size is always too small for a given fish and that tank size needs to be adjusted to consider both the juvenile and adult size of a fish. More discussion of how to approach selecting minimum tank size information needs to occur with the hopes that some appropriate and more objective methodology can develop.
but does that make me stupid ?
