BooUrns!

At least the full quote.... and the really important part is the ""HINTS FOR SELLING SOMETHING FASTER""....It's a hint... not a rule. That said... the mods and admin might have the right or obligation to force someone to follow the site rules... But, NO ONE has the right to decide what the asking price of an individual item should be. That's the choice of the seller. The choice of the buyer or potential buyer is to either not buy ...ie. close the thread , buy or if really interested and feel the price is too high to pm with a lower offer. The forum rules are here. There is no mention of a suggested forum retail price other than all items for sale should have one. The word hobby is mentioned at least twice. Since this is a community forum of aquarium hobbyists, the admin team should be responsible for the protection of it's members from unscruplulous sellers as much as it is responsible to control hijacking of posts in the buy/sell forum. IF we're going to change the rules, we should be protecting everyone here, even if it's protection from other members. If you are a member of this hobbyist community and are trying to sell your fish at three or four times what YOU know is the going market rate (not the price you paid but the current market rate) then you are trying to defraud other members of this community and should be censured. This is one of those ethical principles I was mentioning. No one likes it when their choice to ask exorbitant prices is questioned as this invariably leads to the inability to reach a maximum profit potential. Barring members from expressing dissent at the unethical actions of other members on this forum is also distasteful as it leads to public conflict. The easiest solution is moderator review of posts and prices before they are published in the buy/sell forum. If you want to ask $300 for your breeding pair of guppies and are upset that the the mods won't allow it, then you are free to try other aquarist venues such as aquabid or ebay. Your assertion that "NO ONE has the right to decide what the asking price of an individual item should be" is incorrect. This is a privately owned forum and the administration team can make those decisions if they so choose. If you disagree, you have the right to try that kind of chicanery elsewhere. There are checks and balances and controls in the commercial sector to guard against the overpricing of items, I don't think this community should hesitate to apply these same principles to its' members.

Don't feel bad. Going though that process and sharingit here is a lot of use to the rest of us who have tank building aspirations.

Of course a proven pair is worth more than just two fish but how much more? Is it worth twice the cost of two fish? Three times? Four times? Should the buyer be required to pay the seller for two or three potential generations of offspring? There are a lot of variables to be addressed there. The price becomes an ethical question, one which I think needs to be reviewed by admins/moderators. Leaving it up to the the chance that 'no one will buy at that price' leaves uninformed members of our community exposed to potential exploitation.

I can understand your wish to be able to ask whatever price you want for your fish. That's the nature of capitalism. This however is a community forum of hobbyists and I think there needs to be some ethical oversight when allowing members to sell their goods here. If you've paid a certain amount for a fish or breeding group, have made money from posessing them and selling their offspring, is it ethical to ask for a higher value than what you paid for those fish? Should the next owner pay you for the potential profit they might receive from owning these fish with no guarantee that they will get a return on their investment? If you're going to make additions to the buy/sell rules, you should add a section on ethical principles. We're hobbyists, not commercial resellers. The point of this forum is to encourage people to be active in the hobby and to propagate different species kept in captivity. Allowing people to ask exorbitant amounts for fish will only lead to scarcity of those species as the higher prices will deter buyers from purchasing them and continuing their propagation. Stores treat these fish as commodities, I don't think we should be doing the same. All that being said, if we are a community, are we all to remain silent and let one unsuspecting member of this community purchase items on this site for prices that seem too high? Perhaps all posts in the buy/sell section should have to be reviewed by an admin/moderator before they are published in the forum. This is of course, more work for the admins but it gives them a chance to perform an ethical review as well as a chance to request an edit of location details & price before the posts go public. This woud alleviate issues of public commentary/post-whoring/hijacking. The rest of the buy/sell process could be handled completely through the private message system.

I'm bringing a few of the larger EB crays that are getting too large to be trusted with my goldfish. I can't bear to sell any of the fish from my spencer jack order. I'll also be decked out in an orange shirt. :smokey:

Good to hear that they honoured their warranty obligations. Who handled the property damage? Home insurance?

The blotchiness you refer to might be an indication of a 'piebald' variety lister under the sp.3. Two of my commons also have that blotchiness in a pattern on their dorsal side.

The fish I have that are supposedly A.temnickii are much larger than any of my other BN types. Around 5-6" compared to the 3" common white tipped BN's. I was thinking that my temnickiis were also Ancistrus sp.3 but after comparing them to the planetcatfish exemplars, perhaps A.tamboensis?

lol Thanks for the clarification! Accurate as always RD! :thumbs:

If it has white tips on it's fins, it's probably Ancistrus sp.3, the common bristlenose. A lot of the smaller BN's we get at the auctions are labelled Ancistrus dolichopterus, they all seem to have the white tips but the exemplar pictured on planetcatfish.com has a complete white band on it's tail. I'm surprised that the ACE execs are not a little more selective about labelling of catfish species considering the fanatical interest in cichlid nomenclature they have. :smokey:

I beleive you're refering to Gold's aquariums. I posted about the low prices he was offering last winter. Between Gold's price ($250 +gst at the time) and the cost of driving out to the store that Frank brokered the deal with, the costs work out to be the same, unless you can get yours delivered. Either way, the suggessted retail of $400 is ridiculous and Hagen should be investigated for their attempts to artificially control prices. I've forgotton what the regulatory body is that governs pricing standards but I know they are out there. As much as I hate Hagen's corporate policies, let's not start another debate post. Or better yet, Let's sticky a full out hate Hagen thread! Compile all the different FX5 debates and Hagen hate threads into one super ANTI-HAGEN thread! :thumbs:

So you can sell them as cheaply as you like, you just can't advertise the fact. I guess people like Frank will have to continue to act as the herald if we're going to get any more good deals on these things. If it's going to come down to a price comparison between Hagen's overpricing of inferior products and the high import cost of eheim's superior product lines, I think I'm going to pick quality over price gouging. I can't beleive they even mention free market enterprise in that statement...

The breeding is similar but there are difficultlies in acquiring high grade CRS and a secondary issue of keeping them alive. CRS are very susceptible to water quality issues and will not thrive if those conditions are not maintained. In addition to being very expensive, they are not readily available in Canada. There are a few sources of A, B, and C grade CRS available locally but I haven't seen any S grade or higher in Canada (one exception being a breeder in Vancouver). If you're looking for more information on keeping them and want to see how fanatical those that are already raising them can get, try going to Shrimp Now Forums. Some good sources of info and an international community of shrimp breeders. If you're interested in giving them a try but don't want to risk the expenditure on high grade CRS, Henry has some Black Diamond Shrimp. These shrimp are the dominant trait colour from which the recessive crystal red colouring derives. Don't mix them or they will breed and you'll have mosly black diamond offspring (although this is a good way to boost CRS grading if you establish a breeding program). I looked into them myself quite extensively but I just don't have the time available that these guys seem to demand.

Since you've gone to the effort of explaining your position and why you began this post I will make an apology to you Jerry as you usually have a lot of goods things to contribute on the forum. I just couldn't understand why you had made such a seemingly negative post and I reacted to your words to that point in the thread. I was aware of how the MOTM is selected and I thought you were criticizing some of the past winners based on their previous record. Everyone who has won an MOTM has demonstrated that they deserved it either through contributions or through a marked improvement in the quality of their contributions just from frequenting this forum. And I'm not just saying this because I won one last year... Thanks for clarifying your position.

Done ...my pm is sent Sour grapes makes whine... I think this feature of the website is a good thing. We should be happy for those who have been named MOTM, not envious. If your interest lies in making trouble and disparaging other members than I think you don't have the best interests of this community at heart. The MOTM is just another tool to encourage the developement of good fishkeeping practices in this hobby and to reward that desire to improve ones' fishkeeping abilities and body of knowledge. Why does the selection of candidates matter to you anyhow?

Princess Auto carries strips of LEDs intended for use in automotive modifications. The lights are in sealed plastic tubes and are powered by 12v car port plug-ins. I bought some ac/dc adapters from the same store (did a rough estimate of what VDC size I needed per strip), clipped the cables and spliced them together. The strips were on sale at the time so I think it only cost me around $10 total.

Try a pond of at least 1-2000 gallons, a few 18" long koi and wait til springtime. Breeding koi in an aquarium environment is unlikely and dangerous to the fish. Breeding sized (18" and larger) koi should not be housed in any aquarium as there is simply not enough space in any reasonably sized aquarium. When spawning, the multitude of eggs and milt would pollute any aquarium and sometimes threatens to overwhelm small ponds. Do a little research online to see the facilities most koi breeders keep.

Interesting fish! Almost makes me want an African cichlid... almost...

Definately. I run an FX5 on a 55G with five fancy goldfish. It keeps a nice current in the tank and minimizes the amount of service the filter needs. I bought a second FX5 via the deal Frank brokered last time a few months back. It's an unbeatable price.

I've also been wondering about the BN's I've purchased at past auctions. I have a group of five regular BN's that seem to be Ancistrus dolichopterus ( most were labelled as A. dolichopterus when I purchased them at the last auction) that have never bred despite the male having an abundant choice of females. In the tank next door my A. temnickii(?) used to go at it like rabbits with only a single pair. Looking on plantecatfish, they don't quite seem to look like the exemplar of A. doilchopterus but do share many characteristics. It is interesting to note that after reading on Planetcatfish about the Ancistrus temnickii, this pair I bought at the summer auction may well be Ancistrus sp.3 as they don't at all resemble the images of A.temnickii displayed. It seems that this pleco has been mislabelled in the aquarium trade for quite some time. What do I care? As long as they start breeding again!

Yes, I found that list WWM shortly after making my post. It seems most of the plants I already possess are suitable for this brackish setup. Thanks for the input! :thumbs:

Your stand looks very nice! Good job tieing the uprights into the ceiling joists. It looks very sturdy.

I'm going to set up a brackish tank for my poor dragon gobies. I'm looking for suggestions as to plants that will survive the salty water.

Anyone know where I can can find large power bars, 10 outlets or more (and of course at reasonable prices)? The little ones just don't cut it anymore. As I set up more tanks, I'm getting a little nervous with the massive amount of wires I have trailing around my fishroom. How do you guys shock-proof yourselves?

I have a breeding pair of A. Temnicki that were purchased at the last ACE auction. The difference I have seen them described under is the distinction of the temnickis being the Bushynose pleco while the others are refferred to as Bristlenoses, the abbreviation can sometimes make them seem as they are identical. They grow somewhat larger than the common Bristlenose and don't have the little spots across their bodies.