Hi everyone thanks for the warm welcome! I don't want to start anything so I wont be specific (unless it's ok?), but here's a little background on what happened. When I arrived to town I setup my nano tank and let it settle for a week to make sure it survived the move (was previously setup for ~1.5 years). Luckily all corals (sps/lps/zoas/softies) and fish (2 ocellaris) were perfectly fine.
I started to browse around town to look for a suitable nano companion for my clowns. I got pretty excited browsing their websites and looking at the pictures of their stores...and to my surprise things were quite different in person. The two I visited didn't have much livestock, and were pretty overrun with algae breakouts. Now I understand keeping up with fish store maintenance can't be easy, but these were unacceptable in my book. Luckily I am willing to ignore these things if I can find good livestock and customer service. One of the stores didn't even acknowledge my presence (I've since been back and was acknowledged, so I am willing to forgive them for that). The second store I visited I met and chatted with the owner; he was very friendly and even though his store wasn't up to par, I was willing to give his livestock a chance. Unfortunately he didn't have the fish I wanted in, but told me he should have one the following week.
I dropped by the store the following week just after they got their shipment in. I asked the sales associate (not the owner) how much the fish was, and he looked at something on his phone and told me $34.99. I didn't have time to take it home that day so I decided to come back later for it. One thing that bothered me was that they had absolutely nothing but substrate in their fish tanks. This may be fine for fish who like to swim out in the open, but for smaller nano species who like to hide and perch, the lack of hiding spots seemed to be unnecessarily stressing them out. I waited a few days and my desire for a new fish took over and I went back to the store.
This visit was a little different. The owner was there instructing his employees what he wanted them to do (aquascaping their frag tanks etc). I don't have a problem with this, but when I asked for assistance it felt as if I were bothering them. I did not feel welcome. I also noticed that the particular fish I wanted was now shown as $39.99. Regardless of the price change I decided to go ahead with it. I asked the employee if the fish was eating and if he could show me, and he said "oh yea he's eating great". Unfortunately I am not stubborn enough to be persistant (I already didn't feel welcome), so I didn't push the feeding subject matter. He bagged the fish and asked if I wanted fish insurance. As some of you have mentioned above, you would like to see guarantees on livestock. From where I come from, even the crappiest stores in town offered some sort of guarantee on their livestock as long as you brought in water so they could test it. I declined his offer, because for some reason I trusted that his livestock would be of high quality.
I took the fish home and drip acclimated the little guy for 30-45minutes. Let him into the tank, and he found a nice spot to perch right away. To cut a long story short I woke up the next morning to find the fish dead under a rock. The fish lasted less than 8 hours. The employee made it clear that if I did not purchase their fish insurance then anything that happens and I'm out of luck. Now I'd love to blame my tank, but my rock, fish, and coral have been going strong for over a year now. My working theory is that after being shipped to the store, spending a few days in a tank with no where to hide, under constant duress from a lack of hiding spaces, then being bagged and transferred to a new tank, killed the fish. When I introduced him into my tank I noticed he was breathing a bit heavy, but I figured it was just stress from the new environment. Either way I didn't expect to wake up to him dead the next morning. I've had fish die on me before for various reasons, but never within the first 8 hours. Given their policy on dead livestock, and the unwelcomeness I felt when purchasing, I didn't think it would be worth the hassle to contact the owner.
