midgetwaiter

It's probably better for everyone if people with specific questions like this give the store a call. Christian does his best to answer them but he's not always able to reply for a couple days and might not have up to the minute info. I don't get to the store very much myself these days so I can't always help out either, I'd hate to tell someone we had something in stock only to find out it was sold since I was there last. The store numer is 265-8157 For the questions that are already here HmgBrd: I'm not sure of the exact species but they aren't Amanos, they are about 1cm now and should reach a size of 2 or 3 cm. They should be okay in the warmer water your discus need but they might get eaten, call it a 50/50 chance. Neely: There are w/c teacups and motoros as well as a big retic and flower ray that came in on the 8th, we got a shipment of captive bred leopoldi and motoros last week which is really nice to see. You'd want to call to confirm exactly what is still in stock. Wibber: Lots, depends what you are after. For fancy stuff we've received L260, L18, L24, L34 and L200 in the past 10 days as well as some rubbers. We usually have clown and bristlenose in stock and I think there is a big L400 somewhere still too. I know there's lots more but that's what I can recall off the top of my head. It's cool if people want to ask stuff here but please keep in mind that we'll reply as soon as we have a chance and that the info might not be 100% current. Looks like there's lots of interest for the sale this month, should be a nice relaxing for me way to spend a Saturday. -roll- Aaron

Have you seen any of the stools? Is it stringy white stuff? If so I would suspect an intestinal parasite of some kind, you would treat by using metrozonidole or praziquantel. This would be unusual in CB fish and any commercially available livebearer probably is. The bent back could be a sign of a congenital defect though, there isn't anything you could do about that.

I never found the baseless comments to be especially galling, it was obvious what they were and I always welcomed the chance to address them. I like the idea of the vendor review and was upset to see it go until I put some more thought into the issues. The thing that I am trying to figure out is why people often make the jump from one sick fish or bad shipment to "that store is horrible". I've seen it countless times and it just doesn't make any sense.

I'm curious about something. I made a few points above about hobby people being unreasonable, something I expected to be rather contentious, I at least expected some reply. Should I take this to mean that people agree with me or that nobody thinks it's worth talking about?

The notion of an 100% unbiased moderator being required is silly, it's just not a situation that warrants it. Someone who is reasonably honest would suffice. If I were to find myself the moderator slot and come a cross a negative submission on my store I'd much rather post it and respond anyway. Of course you can find counter examples just about anywhere, even here when the Big Al's stuff got out of hand some of the moderators were IMO the worst offenders from a common sense / decency point of view. Even with moderated submissions the idea still doesn't work though. I think you can narrow it down to two basic issues, we have unreasonable expectations for our LFS and we tend to make unwarranted assumptions. There is a wonderful example of the unreasonable expectations to be found locally. There is one LFS I can think of that does an outstanding job in a few key areas. They tend to stock really good gear even though the stuff doesn't sell very quickly and their margins probably suck on it. They also have a great approach to handling their livestock, using very costly quarantine procedures. You can occasionally find cases where people compliment them on this but the majority of comments end up b*tching about their higher prices. You can't have it both ways. I'll use an anecdote to illustrate my view about the unwarranted assumptions as well. There was a thread about my store on another forum and a member posted saying he had recently seen a Blue Tang that was in bad shape in a tank that was to small, etc. He took this observation and decided that the store was not taking care of the fish well and that the overall quality of the livestock was bad. The thing he didn't know was that someone had given us the fish in that condition a few days previously and we didn't have a bigger tank available for it at the time, we were doing our best with the situation. I don't want to single this guy specifically, he seems like a decent guy, I think it's more an example of the problems in the hobby's culture. The basic assumption is that stores are greedy, incompetent and don't care about their livestock. There are examples of this kind of behavior but I think it is very rare, especially in independent shops. I can't think of the last time I was in an small store and saw something that I knew was the result of malfeasance or obvious neglect. When people expect to find things like this in the LFS they will find it, they see a situation like the one above and assume it is an example of what they are looking for. The reason that a vendor review section can't work is that we as hobbyists make bad reviewers. Without a serious shift in attitudes it will never work.

It's not unusal to see problems like this when you make a sudden diet switch with any animal, it takes a while for the intestinal flora to adjust. You'll probably see things normal out in a week or so.

If you are using Calgary city water don't bother treating it to lower pH. It doesn't matter one bit to most fish if the pH or hardness are too high as long as it is STABLE. It is difficult to modify water in this way and do a good job of it, and outside of some very specific situations it is unnecessary.

What Jvision said, 99 times out of 100 the best answer is don't do this, it is very difficult to do well.

Yeah Mopani is fine in the water you need to setup for a figure 8. As far as the filter goes, you will find all sorts of different opinions about renas, IME they're junk. Any way you look at it though, you will get a much better price / performance out of an AC 500 / 110 and have better media media choices. ACs are nice for puffer tanks as they do a better job of mechanical filtration than any canister would, even if you turn them down a bit so they aren't blowing everythign around in a smaller tank.

If you use mopani it's pretty much a non issue.

Riverfront sells them if you are in Calgary.

Iodized / non iodized doesn't matter, there isn't enough iodine in the salt to hurt the fish until you add enough that the salt would've killed them already. The levels are usually between 50ppm to 70ppm, it is not significant. Sounds to me like there is something really wrong with the Keyholes, something that was being suppressed by their immune system but then got more aggressive when they were stressed from fighting. The fungus is probably just a secondary infection from a bite but the darkening of the fins suggests septicemia, blood poisoning from some biological issue. It might just be colour change from stress to though, I would expect blood poisoning to look more red or rust coloured. Keep them separated and wait it out but I think it doesn't look good at all. Sorry.

Why can't you add enough water that the sump is only half full while the pump is running? Do you end up filling the bio media section and then still running low in the return? If you have baffles in your sump separating the return section they might not be allowing enough flow into the return section or the return section may be too small.

A 20 gal might do it but a 20 long or 29 would be better. Just add lots of wood or plants so they can stay away from eachother if they need to. Put a good oversize filter on it like an Aquaclear 70. THis is a good article http://www.thepufferforum.com/articles/puffer/f8puffer.html

That more or less what is going on. It seems like the nitrite munchers are the easiest to disturb too. It shoudl clear up within a week or so.

They do that, usually you can see some waste being expelled when they do it. As lonh as it is back to itself in a day or two it's nothing to worry about.

It died before we got it.

Okay so then how can you be upset? You are getting worked up over something that probably has been overlooked at worst. They never told you there wouldn't be a credit did they? If you expect something ask for it, Niki and James are nice people they will probably be embarrassed this was missed. This is a common justification when hobbyists get upset about something and it's bogus. You probably do spend 100x what that parent does but there are 500 of them for every one of you. Sorry but just because you are to embarrassed to ask doesn't mean that they are treating you badly. Nobody is going to think less of you when you ask for something that was agreed on earlier. ----- Edit Maybe that seems harsh, it's not meant to, I actually have this conversation with my g/f on a regular basis. We all feel dumb or wierd sometimes when we have to call somebody on a mistake but you will feel worse about it if you don't.

A batch of fry is one thing, unwanted adults are completely different. You may be able to turn over nice juvies quickly but usually adults will languish and need to be sold relatively cheaply. I don't really understand why people choose this, for most purposes buying an adult is a pretty good idea but that's the way it is. You know it's possible that the only reason the owners took this fish was because you're a steady customer. It's nice that they managed to sell one quickly but I bet they went into it with the expectation that they wouldn't. They probably get people offering them unwanted adults several times a day as well. Ask one the owners about the credit, you can be sure they forgot to tell somebody or whomever they told forgot about it in turn.

Sorry but I have no idea.

I saw some at Gold's this weekend too. Some of them were huge. Strange isn't it Johnah, you've been looking for these guys for quite a while and all of a sudden everybody has em.

I think the people on the forums are important not because it is a large part of the customer base but because they are potentially "opinion makers". Some guy at work asks where to go for stuff because they know you have a lot of fish etc. The sign thing is a decent idea and I've considered it. It just falls into the another thing that needs to be done category, depends how busy you are in the first place.

Really nice colour for his size, I bet he's spectacular when he grows up. You should try him with NLS pelets.

What I am trying to point out is yes you can remove the vendor review section, but you can't never stop people from voicing their opinion. The problem is though that you can count on many of them to jump into a good old bash fest and behave poorly when the opportunity arises too. If you could get people to stick to a decent standard it would be possible but they just won't do it.

I was disapointed when the vendor review closed and vocal about it but I think I was probably wrong. I outlined my ideas for how to build a useful and fairly robust review section but the guys weren't interested. At that point I started to do a little looking around at how sites that do this manage it. I found that nobody does it very well. The thing I liked about the vendor review forum is that it gave me a chance to talk to customers who were unhappy about something they saw in the store an explain either why we were doing something a certain way or why we were unable to handle a certain situation better. People jump to conclusions pretty fast, especially in this hobby where the LFS people are not thought of very well. Things like "I was there yesterday and all the corals look horrible" may in fact be true. It may also be true that an airline lost some paperwork and the shipment was held in a warehouse for 2 days until the papers could be replaced (really happened). A forum like that gives LFS people a chance to clear up these things. I still think that a place where people can talk about what they saw in a store is a good thing. The problem is how people talk about what they see and this is where the potential for legal trouble comes in as well. If you can manage to keep things factual you are in good shape. "The fish were sick and looked bad" is not the same as "there were some platys in one of the tanks with ick when I was there last week". Which one will people post though? That's the problem. I actually saw a post somewhere where somebody asked about the store I work for and somebody said "I got some bad fish from them 9 years ago and haven't gone back, it is a bad place". Seriously how is that relevant? Is it not likely the place has changed in 9 years? See i thought to myself, if these guys don't want to take this on I can do it. Build a site that has a regional focus and provides solid information on stores in the area. People can talk about what they see, owners can respond as they see fit. I spent a lot of time looking at this idea before I shelved it and have a ton of bookmarks that show why it won't work. What it boils down to is people cannot be relied on to behave in a rational manner. There is a culture of bashing the LFS in this hobby that will never be subdued, you can hold it down a bit but it always surfaces in the ugliest way you can imagine. Look at what happened here with the Big Al's closing threads, it was awful. Some of it is explainable, somebody is having a bad day and vents a bit or hits the submit button a little too soon, I do it myself on a regular basis. The rest of it though, it's just inexcusable.