Like Greg said, we are not here to slam our LFS. Some are better than others, some are worse. Some have great customer service, some have none whatsoever. We have a pretty powerful voice here on this forum, but we are only a very small percentage of the LFS traffic that is seen...perhaps 25% at the greatest is my guess.
The way we change things in a LFS that is not using sound husbandry is by letting them know what we think when we are there, or by not patronizing them with our hard-earned dollars.
It is tough to resist "saving" a soon-to-be dying coral or fish that should have never been imported in the first place, but letting it die in the store that bought it lets them eat the loss and not us....it also might encourage them not to order it again in the future.
One thing I would like to see in every LFS is a date of when the fish came into the store, so you can have some idea of how it is doing in captivity. If you buy them right after a shipment comes in and it dies, then that kind of defeats the purpose of a LFS. I hope to buy fish from LFS that are healthy, or I could just buy them online. It is nice to know that it has been there for 2-3 weeks and is eating, looking good, etc. before I buy it.
Like Greg said, all LFS are going to have sick and/or dying fish, that is the nature of the business. But, we all know when a store is not up to snuff or could be doing something better. Sometimes the best thing might be to talk with the owner and let them know that things are amiss, sometimes they don't listen and it is time to take your money somewhere else.
