rough day at my LFS :(

NanoReefWanabe

NanoReefWanabe

Active member
well knowing my LFS gets their stuff on Wednesday's i decided today would be a good night to swing by and see if they have anything worth looking at...first tank i saw had about 20 crocea clams in it...5 looked like they had pinched mantle...they i looked down to the anemone tank...oh my goodness...12-15 LTA's, 5 BTA's, a couple i had no idea of...and 8 Mags...i asked for the price...guy said they were gonna be about 50 bucks each...in their shriveled acclimating state they were about 10-12"....can only imagine what they would look like if they live and get inflated...i snapped a couple pics with my cell phone...there is actually two that look pretty decent, aside from being bleached out...but as you will tell from the pics...all the nems are bleached out...they assured me that was shipping stress....hehehehe, i hope they come around though...

and yeah they are all crammed into a 75g tank..and surprisingly enough...those pics are pretty bang on from what i saw with my eye..there were no power heads on, tank flow was off as they were doing a water change, and yes the water was that murky.
15-01-09_1951.jpg

15-01-09_1952.jpg
 
Oh my God! Look at the poor Mags! I am sure chemical warfare must be raging in that tank...They look like they have just been dumped in together...
 
M.Maddox, do you think that online store don't have that same problem on arrival of big orders? They just don't show the public, there are good and bad online vendors just like LFS's, to say you detest all is naive. I have been in this industry from a commercial collector to wholesaler importer to owning my own LFS, though not in that order, and just because you only see the prime photos online doesn't make them better. I have been at a vendor where a whole shipment was so bad the they didn't want to put it in there system and dumped it. How humane is that? just because you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Pree, go to a wholesaler and you'll see all of the anemones just as crowded unless they are stinging each other, if that is the case they are put in tiny cubes or containers to seperate them, either way it isn't like a nice home aquarium, this is a business.

If you want to hold someone accountable for the health of the animals start with the collectors, I am a firm believer (and I have posted it many times) that many of the animals we try to keep die because of how they are collected and held until they arrive at a wholesaler rather then anything we do or don't do after arrival. One time diving in the Sea of Cortez with a collector of blue spotted jawfish I watched them use bleach to get the fish out of the burrows, how many of these fish died because of that, and to get mad at a pet store for crowding some anemones, or to think that some online vendor isn't doing the same. This is something that should be brought to the attention of every hobbyiests, but has been done successfully for a long time and we still get healthy animals for out tanks.

Just my own observations and pet peeves, so I'll get off my soap box now.
 
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the saddest part of this LFS is they continually get animals like this in and never sell them...generally leave the rotting ones in there which in turn is killing all the others..i am not saying this doesnt happen everywhere it is just upsetting to see...by the way their anemone tank is lit by 2 48" VHO's...one looks actinic the other daylight...
 
i've been looking for ages for a purple base mag. i see a bunch in that photo in that state. it makes me so sad :(
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14175017#post14175017 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Gig 'em
That's terrible..... what a waste of such magnificent animals..
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Yeah, it makes me so sad
 
There should be laws against this crap. If we're going to pluck the reefs for our hobby it should be done in a responsible way and everything should be done to make sure that livestock arrives alive. Obviously conditions like this are far less than ideal. Whether you're a LFS or an online dealer there should be standards that have to be maintained.

I swear I can't stand people that can't see further than themselves.
 
Then you'll have to change the whole business of fish keeping. Though less then ideal, this happens to be a bad shipment, and putting them in such a crowded situation doesn't help.

One thing to remember is this (crowding) has been done successfully with little damage to the animals since the begining of keeping anemones. Usually they are not together long enough to do damage because they are sold quickly and once in a hobbyiests tank they get much better care. Shipping (which has improved every year) is a big factor in how well these guys get to us. That is what happened to those anemones, something went wrong to stress them out, maybe to the point of no return. To blame the store is wrong, they had nothing to do with the packing or air travel.

The regulations for transporting live fish gives the airlines 48 hours to get the shipment to it destination city, a lot of bad things can happen in that time, what if the order sat in Chicago over night? I have no idea of this particular orders route to the store, this is just an example, but temps there are below freezing and the fish sit in a cargo area the size of a building with not only no heating, but they open and close the cargo doors every time a plane lands. If we want to change the regulations we need to start there.

There are already laws that are supposed to protect the reefs, if individuals break the law, that shouldn't be a blanket indication of all collectors, the blue jaw example was only one guy, the others used much safer methods (still with drugs though, there are several legal and accepted drugs in the collection trade) to get the jaws out, though when I collected for a living we dug them out, not fish "safe" chemicals, but still there are rules, and you can try to force every collector to follow them, but there will always be guys who take shortcuts and break the law. I have to say, most collectors I have dove with are very good and collect with care.

It is sad to see this in our retailers tanks, but if the shipment had come to them in good shape we would all be praising them and talking about how cool the shipment was. You have to take the good with the bad.
 
Fish stores can't possibly only keep one anemone per system. In order to not have any chemical warfare they would all have to be in their own systems. While I think that is too many anemones in that tank, maybe they are connected to a large system, so the chemicals are more spread out.

Like philter4 said, they are usually sold rather quickly, so they get out of the tank after a short while. It wouldn't be financially possible to have only one anemone per tank.
 
I'm not claiming to be an expert but that seems to be way too many for one tank. Seems to me they should at least not be touching each other.
 
It is so sad to think that there are less and less of these in the ocean and people are just taking them out and killing them carelessly in tanks like this. It breaks my heart.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14185080#post14185080 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by NirvanaFan
Fish stores can't possibly only keep one anemone per system. In order to not have any chemical warfare they would all have to be in their own systems. While I think that is too many anemones in that tank, maybe they are connected to a large system, so the chemicals are more spread out.

Like philter4 said, they are usually sold rather quickly, so they get out of the tank after a short while. It wouldn't be financially possible to have only one anemone per tank.
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true enough...but knowing the capacity of their system and what not is it financially viable to order 50 animals to watch them all die? or sell 5 of them to have the customer PO'ed when the animal dies and pollutes their tank..

i would have to figure it only hurts on more then one way to order so many to have them die, and the ones that dont die in their tanks die in the customers tanks, as the LFS employees push the sales of sick animals...(either knowingly or not)
 
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