I was rereading this thread and while not getting into the whole pet chain store thing, I have to agree with Henryb here about not bashing someone for being under informed, everybody has to learn somewhere and I think that MFK is a good place to learn it right, as long as the newbies feel free to ask questions, after all the worst question to be asking is "Why are all my fish dead?"
stupid noob death tank
- Thread starter lewis
- Start date
I never trust anybody from fish stores either. The lfs by my house told me that I could put 16 piranhas in a 106 gallon tank for life....
LOL, you could, it is just that 5-6 of them would have rather shorter lives than the rest of them. With piranha I sort of expect that.sprtslvr785 said:
My opinion:
A seller of pets have a responsibility to know the animal it's selling. Just as the buyer has the responsibility to know what it's buying.
In this case both of these went wrong, with bad results.
Bad salespeople have always been a problem for fish hobbyists, as a bad first impression with the hobby makes people quit before they get into the wonder that is fishkeeping.
Uninformed people is a problem also. People thinking fish is just something you can get as a ornament just needs to get some respect for the work and knowledge needed to care for a living creature.
This is not a aquaria-only problem though, most pet hobbies have it. But the low price of fish and the common misconception that they "only need water and food" makes this happen.
Now that's a lot of whine, how about something constructive? We as hobbyists can help and inform people around us. Point out errors in others, and working for fish getting the protective laws (don't know exactly how it is in the US, but annyhow) that most other pets have. Perhaps a county-wide "stamp of approval" for good fish dealers handed out by our organisations. We need to remove the attitude of fish keeping as a low knowledge/maintenance hobby.
A seller of pets have a responsibility to know the animal it's selling. Just as the buyer has the responsibility to know what it's buying.
In this case both of these went wrong, with bad results.
Bad salespeople have always been a problem for fish hobbyists, as a bad first impression with the hobby makes people quit before they get into the wonder that is fishkeeping.
Uninformed people is a problem also. People thinking fish is just something you can get as a ornament just needs to get some respect for the work and knowledge needed to care for a living creature.
This is not a aquaria-only problem though, most pet hobbies have it. But the low price of fish and the common misconception that they "only need water and food" makes this happen.
Now that's a lot of whine, how about something constructive? We as hobbyists can help and inform people around us. Point out errors in others, and working for fish getting the protective laws (don't know exactly how it is in the US, but annyhow) that most other pets have. Perhaps a county-wide "stamp of approval" for good fish dealers handed out by our organisations. We need to remove the attitude of fish keeping as a low knowledge/maintenance hobby.
This is a common problem with my lfs also. When someone starts in the hobby you depend on others knowledge to learn what is right and wrong. I'm sure at the beginning alot of us have been misinformed (I know I was a couple times) and you learn through trial and error. For instance, people catagorize fish as groups based on generalizations and how many times have we accidentally paired up fish that we assumed would get along based on one or two peoples personal experiences just to have a fish killed? (I read it on here all the time), or presented feeders to a tank with out quarantining them first-unaware of the possibility of desease transfer, or fish jumping out of tanks, ropefish slipping out of holes in the back of tanks...... These things happening enables us to prevent them from happening again. It is unfortunate for the Oscars and that makes me sad but it is definitely a lesson learned!!!!
he said he threw them straight, maybe he shocked the fishes?lewis;54402; said:hi all here at mfk,
Im really enjoying this site but heres my story, pretty common.
when i bought my first fish tank about 2 years ago i filled it up with hose water and raced out with a water sample to go get some oscars, the Lfs guy checked the water then asked what size tank it was, i told him it was a 36x15x18 and he said "OH great you could have atleast 5 oscars in there and your waters just perfect". you can see where this is going so i got 5 2'' oscars got home threw them all straight in and by the next moning guess what? they were all lying at the bottom of the tank except one who was floating on the top.
from there on in I never trusted another lfs and never will, i wanted blood for what this guy had done.
now I am very precise with my water params and my stocking levels. And allways research everything before i buy.
thanks for reading
lewis-
