Fish sizing

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lee1

Plecostomus
MFK Member
May 19, 2008
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paradise
Is it just me or does it just chaps your lips when someone tells you a certain fish is 7 inches and you get it and it is only 5? They must be using a special ruler or something.How hard is it to measure a fish.
 
it is annoying. i wish everyone would stick to standard length. that two inches could easily be all tail fin. i always ask for both standard and total.
 
it's all marketing... If I say a fish is 7" it will have a better apeal to people who don't want to grow out a juvi.

That being said YEAH it sucks.
 
I use to order discus and africans and when I spoke to the people would say the fish was 5inches full length including tail and when they arrived they were 4 inches at best.I for one do not count the tail just to be safe when people ask me the size.For example if I was going to buy a tig and ask someone how big it was and he said 12 inches and when it came in the body was 6 and the streamers were 6 would that not be crappy?

My point is some people just do not realize what 6 inches is.
 
It is annoying. I ordered in an albino senegal bichir to the store I worked at and it was supposed to be 5" which I though would work perfectly with my 6" ornate for the time being. The fish came in and was maybe 2.5" at best. That was definitely not a TL vs SL mix up. Either someone was straight up lying, or an idiot. I've had the fish 3 months and it's still a little shy of the size I was promised originally (and the ornate is now probably 8.5" TL so at this point they will probably never be able to live together even for a short period)
 
sometimes a rough guess is better than the response i got one time when calling a LFS
(one of the crappy stores here in town, but i heard they had a gar, and no one else has all summer, so i called)

me: do you still have the gar for sale?
lfs: maybe, thats the long skinny one right? let me check .... yeah, we have one
me: ok, about how long is it?
lfs: oh, its big! its $25 (all gar in this chain are $25, from 2"-24" they are always $25)
me: yeah, but about how long? is it over or under 14"?
lfs: let me check ..... yeah it's really big! you'll have to come in and check it out

needless to say i didn't drive across the city to go to a crappy store and check it out ... i heard from someone who saw it that it was about 11"
 
I like to go by TL. So far it seems that most of the fish I sold from my stock I measure by putting the ruler up against the glass and that's the size I put down. They usually end up being about an inch bigger.
 
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