LFS Poly practices

[Burbotman]

An observation from a recent trip to my LFS.

Four months ago I picked up a scrawny 3.5" endi from my LFS. It was a newly arrived batch of around 12 fish most around the 3" range. As Endi's are very rare up here I picked the up the biggest and healthiest looking.

Well long story short. Four months later the Endi I picked up is 11" long and continues to eat any thing I put in the tank (way faster growth than my other endi)

Yesterday I was back at the LFS and noticed that they still had some of the batch of endi's mine was from. What was amazing was that they were virtually the same size as they were 4 months ago!!(3") I confirmed that these were the ones that came in 4 months ago.

Obviously LFS restrict food to keep fish at more manageble sizes, but this seemed unbelievable. I am curious as to what effect this may have on future development of these fish?

I do not know if this is common LFS practice, anyone have LFS experiance to draw on?

 

[Cohazard]

Great post! I have been wanting to post this exact discussion, but it got lost between working on a couple other articles, drinking, and feeding the fish lol

I don't think the LFS are trying to keep the fish at a manageable size, I think they are trying to cut costs by not feeding the fish, and thus, not having to worry about water quality as much, saving another cost.

I experienced the same thing with my albino senegalus. Got it in december at 3.5", it's now 6" and looking semi-sb, somewhat stubby.

The ones at the LFS look exactly the same, though somewhat thinner, very worm like which is not a good shape for polys.

So I pull from it a clearer understanding of how stunting actually works. The fish will grow when purchased and kept in good conditions, but they will never reach their full potential.


I also believe that this is much more common, and more of a problem than most people realize. It could be the explanation behind the reason most fish never reach their full size, you hear people say '...but in an aquarium it'll only grow up to..."


EDIT: that is some crazy growth on that endli! Congrats for doing right by it.

 

[dbcb314]

i have seen this happen to other fish such as my african knifefish that grew crazy fast compared to the ones still left at the LFS

 

[Bogwoodbruce]

I work in an LFS an do agree we feed our fish there well, all the predatory stuff gets meaty feed etc at least 4 days per week but its not cheap everything else gets flake and pellets daily. But its to keep costs down really. I mean shops dont keep the fish to raise em, just hold em really till they are sold.

 

[Cohazard]

i have seen this happen to other fish such as my african knifefish that grew crazy fast compared to the ones still left at the LFS

I agree, this would be an issue that affect all types of fish at an LFS

 

[Benja]

I bought 2 sengalus at my lfs about a month ago. There was a batch of about 25 they were all about 2.0-2.5" so tiny. so cute.

Both my sengalus are 4" now, I visit the lfs a few times a week and have noticed that their specimens arn't growning.

So many of them have missing fins. Some with no gill fins. breaks my heart

 

[Burbotman]

One of the things that crossed my mind when I posted this was the impact of this "prolonged period of minimal growth" on the fishes potential growth.

I have an Endi that I picked up 2 years ago that was a scrawny pencil thin 3" fish. Two years later and this fish is only 13" (granted about as this as the barrel of a baseball bat). My new endi is 11" after only 4 months.

The question it raises for me is how much of this difference is genetic and how much may have been due to nuturition at the start of its life?

Cohazard mentioned this in his post about how many fish seem to miss their potential sizes.

 

[Cohazard]

That's a great point I missed Burbotman, how to differentiate between genetics and stunting at an LFS.

For all we know, it could be from the supplier, or the farm conditions, etc...

I am now tossing out my position that 'a fish can grow to it's max potential size as long as its cared for properly'. That is flawed thinking.


I think the only way to better your odds of knowing, is to check your LFS often, and try to know what is in stock, how long it has been there, etc...

 

[dbcb314]

I also believe that this is much more common, and more of a problem than most people realize. It could be the explanation behind the reason most fish never reach their full size, you hear people say '...but in an aquarium it'll only grow up to..."

hmmmmm interesting

 

[Piscineidiot]

Fish growth is generally modelled using the Von Bertalanffy growth curve (http://homepage.mac.com/mollet/VBGF/VBGF.html), where fish grow fast during their initial years, before plateauing and growing minimally during their adult lives. With this in mind, it's quite intuitive that proper feeding and care during the initial years of an animal's life are essential for it to reach its growth potential.

I truly doubt that you could easily distinguish between stunting and genetic size limitation at home. To empirically test this theory, you would need a large number of small bichirs that you could then randomly segregate into four treatments (poor diet; poor water quality; good diet; good water quality) and a control group kept in average conditions during this whole time. You could then measure the bichirs from each group every week or so and run statistical tests to make sure that any size differences were not simply due to chance.

Of course, if your bichir is four times the size of the ones from the same batch that you see in the store after a period of time, it is reasonable to assume that your care (or the store's lack of care) is affecting its growth.

Lastly, as a matter of defending LFS a little - they're not devious, snivelling creatures bent on making life worse for fish or their keepers. Fact of the matter is, when you have tens of thousands of animals to care for and hundreds of tanks, you cannot afford to feed quality food to all of them all of the time. That, and while recreational fish keepers are allowed to spend as much time as they like on maintenance while sparing no expense, employees in fish stores have to serve customers to the best of their ability before they can focus on the maintenance of water quality etc. Above all else, fish stores are businesses. They have to turn a profit in order to exist, they're not just 'hobby aquaria'.

Like an earlier poster put it: LFS just hold onto and maintain fish until they can be sold. They're not there to grow them out to impressive sizes for the pleasure of doing so - although many of the staff do at home.