Kessil

My LFS

Srpsycho11

Srpsycho11

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Hey All,

I live in Cordelia (Fairfield) and we have a LFS, Pet Club, in Greenvalley. I've made the mistake of buying a couple fish from them in the past and it ended bad for me with an ICH attack. I often see sick or ICH covered fish in thier system and truly knew better then to buy from them.

They sell saltwater and seem to sell a lot of it which should translate into a number of reefers in this area, Fairfield, Vallejo, Cordelia and Greenvalley. I'm hoping to get enough of us togther and approach Pet Club on volunteering to clean out their system and tanks so we could have a quality LFS. If anyone is local and interested please let me know.

Thanks,
Gene
 
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Heres the deal. They have ich because they dont quarantine and treat their fish prior to selling. You cleaning out their tanks will not prevent ich from coming. Need to convince the store to quarantine and treat but how will u do that if their main priority is to get fish in the store and sell them as fast as possible?
 
I couldn't agree more but I'm hoping with some help, from experienced and creditable local reefers, we could set them up to do just that . A little education from enough of us, who would in the future, up their sales by knowing their system was clean and they handled their live stock properly.
 
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I think you are facing an impossible situation here. Every week they get new fish. Each of those fish could be bringing in diseases. In most stores many tanks share the same water.

No LFS can afford to do real QT. Too much time and space needed.

Even online vendors with great reputations like Divers Den say to always QT your new fish.

If you look hard enough you can find diseased fish in every LFS.

So what to do? Treat every new arrival like it carries the worst diseases known! ALWAYS QT!! The only way you can know if the fish/invert/coral has been QT'ed properly is to do it yourself.

QT is not just for disease prevention. Fish usually come thru a brutal journey from the ocean to your tank. QT will be the first time since they were on the reef to recover from that. Adding a stressed, malnourished fish to your DT will only add to the stress. Give them a few weeks to settle down, eat and recover. During that time you can observe and decide if treatment is necessary. I always treat for internal parasites (PraziPro) and Ich (Chloroquine phosphate).
 
As far as I know, there aren't any LFS's in the Bay Area that either quarantine or treat fish on a prophylactic basis.

Liveaquaria has a pretty good page that goes over their intake, quarantine, and treatment protocols here. It's possible for them to do this because they have a huge volume of fish coming in, plenty of space, and access to relatively cheap labor. I'm not sure it's possible for a LFS In the Bay Area to do anything similar. It just takes too much space and manpower to manage this type of system. The fish would end up being $300 each to cover their costs.

Teaching your LFS better husbandry is a noble goal though. You may have better luck with getting them to prophylacticly treat their tanks with chloroquine phosphate. That would wipe out most diseases (including ich), it's relatively cheap, and it's and algaecide so it would reduce the amount of time they spend cleaning tanks.

And regardless, you should always quarantine your fish before you put them in your reef tank.
 
Thanks for the input, I do appreciate any responses from you all. I'm not sure quarantining is a real option for any retail pet store but I do think educating them on better tank maintence and industry practices is realistic. If truth be told there are many of us in the hobby who can't quarantine for a plethora of reasons and we rely on stores with good maintence and experienced people. In this case their tanks have old dirty substrate and who knows what the behind scenes system looks like. I was really hoping to get together with some more experienced then myself reefers and see if they will accept some guidance. And yes maybe some free labor if needed or even accepted.
 
A 20 gallon tank, HOB filter, and a heater is all that is needed to quarantine a gross majority of fish.

Simple cleaning and maintenance isn't going to reduce the amount of disease at a LFS. They would need to keep each fish housed in a separate tank, on a separate filtration system. Each system would need to be broken down, cleaned, and sterilized between every new fish. They would have to sterilize their nets after each use. Each tank would need to be far enough away from the next tank to insure that a drop of water never goes into the adjacent tank. They would need to observe every single fish for a few weeks to be sure it was disease free before it was allowed to be sold. Most LFS's are staffed by high school students, do you trust them to do all this right?
 
The store is a business, it's first goal is to maximize profits, if that means buying cheaper fish from sketchy sources, they are full well going to do that. The Pet Club, might be the store you go to for fish, but they're hardly a fish store, most of their sales are dog/cat related as such you're likely to have less effort paid to the fish side of things. Also I'm not sure about the ownership aspect of the store, whether or not each franchise is individually owned or if it's something more akin to Petco or Petsmart where it's a national wide chain, they may not want free labor simply due to liability issues.

FYI, the LiveAquaria bit only applies to the Diver's Den side of things, not the general LA warehouse.

You are your best method for never having pests in your system, not a store, QT should always start at home :)
 
Gotta go with Erin on this , they wouldnt give you the time of day to do anything with there tanks. Also going with John in that just about all LFS tanks have something. I just bought a peacock wrasse from Ultimate in SM and its already gone. No visable signs of anything but obviously it had something
 
Srpsycho11 said:
Hey All,

I live in Cordelia (Fairfield) and we have a LFS, Pet Club, in Greenvalley. I've made the mistake of buying a couple fish from them in the past and it ended bad for me with an ICH attack. I often see sick or ICH covered fish in thier system and truly knew better then to buy from them.

They sell saltwater and seem to sell a lot of it which should translate into a number of reefers in this area, Fairfield, Vallejo, Cordelia and Greenvalley. I'm hoping to get enough of us togther and approach Pet Club on volunteering to clean out their system and tanks so we could have a quality LFS. If anyone is local and interested please let me know.

Thanks,
Gene
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I live in green valley as well and always seem to find myself stopping by there to see what they have. I'm down to volunteer and help clean it out and maybe even provide coral for them!
 
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