Where are the cool LFS's
- Thread starter bosborn1
- Start date
college429
Member
This is my personal favorite: http://ichthythings.com/
They have a good selection of impecably healthy livestock at reasonable prices. If you click on the address on their web-site. I think a map comes up. IMO this is the must see coral store.
However, there are other nice stores if you have spare time:
Finz of Tampa on Dale Mabry Hwy south of Interstate 275
Coral Reef on the corner of Fletcher Avenue and Armenia
Marine Warehouse on Hillsborough a little east of Sheldon Road.
They have a good selection of impecably healthy livestock at reasonable prices. If you click on the address on their web-site. I think a map comes up. IMO this is the must see coral store.
However, there are other nice stores if you have spare time:
Finz of Tampa on Dale Mabry Hwy south of Interstate 275
Coral Reef on the corner of Fletcher Avenue and Armenia
Marine Warehouse on Hillsborough a little east of Sheldon Road.
amheck
New member
.I was thinking about this topic before it came up again. Rather than everybody giving their positive and negative experiences and opinions about this store or that store, we simply refer them to a list of stores. Useful perhaps, but how informative is that? Especially when visitors to our fine city are soliciting our experienced hobbyist opinions.
Perhaps we could enhance the information at our site by adding the size and number of freshwater and marine display tanks. This would give outsiders some idea of the size and selection of the stores.
Perhaps we could enhance the information at our site by adding the size and number of freshwater and marine display tanks. This would give outsiders some idea of the size and selection of the stores.
There's plenty of opinion and experiences that can be found by a simple search...I haven't actually heard any new opinions of local stores in a very long time.
When we first created the list on the website we had decided that anything objective was fair game. Size and number of display tanks certainly falls there...keeping it up to date may be a bit of a challenge though...
When we first created the list on the website we had decided that anything objective was fair game. Size and number of display tanks certainly falls there...keeping it up to date may be a bit of a challenge though...
angelsil
New member
It's not useful, at least no more so than pointing them to the online yellow pages where it says 'Pet Stores - Fish' or whatever the heading is.
Bob had an idea to do an Ebay type rating system where people could rank stores from 1-5 or some sliding scale. No comments. No bickering. Just a number. Just passing that along because it would remove the contentious nature of the discussions here.
As someone who wishes that there had been a more informative list of stores either in this forum or on the webpage when I moved here 2 years ago, I'd hope we can find a solution that provides a little more guidance to our fellow hobbyists.
Well, that's not really true. Since this list was created, Ichthy things has doubled in size, Coral Reef has moved and completely changed their look, same thing with Exotic, Creative Oceans changed their displays several times and then becamse Finz..IME, very few fish stores stay the same for any long period of time.
The point I keep trying to make is that that guidance is already there. First, searching. All of these stores have been discussed at length. Many of the LFS threads actually have some good information before they dissolve into a hostile mess.
The other point is that this forum and our website was never intended to be a replacement for taking part in the club. The original intent was that we would not put any kind of subjective information online that was affiliated with the club (and that includes information in our club forum). If people wanted first hand experience all they need to do is come to a club meeting. Any of us are more than happy to discuss this in person.
The club is certainly free to change it's position on that. I will vote against it and I won't be a part of implementing it, so if that's the direction the club is going to take, someone else will have to take responsibility for it.
bosborn1
In Memoriam
Sorry if I stirred up a hornets nest. I know that the LFS issues are pretty nasty topics in Club forums. I was just trying to do a little site seeing. I did got to Finz and talked to Chris. Some of those corals from that huge tank tear down were great. I liked them so much that I am having some shipped back to NewYork with me. I am going to try to hit a few more today. I don't know if I will make it out to Oldsmar but from what I hear that place is great.
Thanks for the point in the right direction
Scott
Thanks for the point in the right direction
Scott
Well, start with the obvious "local fish stores". I just ran that search and got back about 15 threads from the past 6 months. "lfs visit" gave me about 5 results. "lfs" itself is too common a term but I searched for "lfs" in the titles only and got back 11 results from the past 6 months. This was with 5 minutes of effort and no direction to my searching. I'm sure better results can be had with more well thought out search terms.
I've been hearing these complaints for years and I really don't understand the issues people have with searching. I have never been a premium member and I never have a problem searching. If I had to guess, I've gotten the "too busy" error less than ten times the entire time I've been a member. I also never had a problem before becoming a moderator to it has nothing to do with that. On the rare cases where I've gotten the message, I wait a couple of minutes just like it says and then it works fine.
