Tropical Fish Distributors online closing up shop

[screaminleeman]

Scream you were a lucky one. there is many obviously did not get the same attention or luck in every order.
The wholesale list should have never been posted for the public while trying to supply your clients with the same fishes & prices. Should have done it differently as i stated before.
I personally would go there to pick most of the fish or avoid all together because all the tanks are on a system & when you see a few bad tanks & dead fish I would avoid that row or everything else. Lots of drugs in the water but still things break down. Plus the system was old & running for a very long time so things are bound to break down.
Just like other jobs there is burn out & I have been down that road more then once when your sick & tired of things like the business & some customers that are p.i.a. etc. so attitude sometimes prevail when things are not so good.

Also your better off going there to see whats left because as I understand there is not much there other then community stuff.

me

Not sure that I am so lucky. While every fish I got from them was successfully QT'd and freed of external parasites, I AM LIVING LEGEND in stupid newbie non-compatible fish in tank syndrome. I think in the orders that I placed with them, the prohibitive extreme vast majority of the fish are either the victim(s) of predation due to my ignorance, or were perpetrators of fish on fish crimes to other tank inhabitants.


TFD Lemon Oscar has brutally obliterated 4 Clown Loaches, 1 Kribensis, 1 Peacock Eel & 2 Yellow tail Barracudas

TFD Two Del. Bichirs ate some of the ten TFD Chinese Weather Loaches.

0 of ten TFD baby longnose gars still survive today. Extreme majority due to predation by juvenile TFD Bowfins. One died of broken back.

Only two of six 2" TFD bowfins still live today (both over 14" now!) Cannibals!

0 of three TFD Florida gar made it. All made it from the 5" - 6" range to around 10". One got eaten by Logan (14" @ the time LNG), one jumped from the deck pond and died, the third broke it's back and passed after a few months.

One of the four 2" Nile Tilapia from TFD was killed by the Jaguar cichlid, the other three have gotten considerably larger than I accounted for. The information on the web about this species is the biggest crock of BULL MALORKY I have ever wasted my time researching. If 16" really is the world record, one has already SHATTERED that! For cripes sake, I wish the damn things would stop growing sometime before two feet long, but I trusted the web so I can't blame TFD, but also "forgive" myself due to PEE-PEE internet garbage data.





The two TFD 1.5" pollini tilapia I homed with the TFD rift lake African cichlids grew-out at considerably different rates and required movement to a CA/ SA Cichlid tank. The one outgrew the other and the specific aggression went off the chart. I nursed the smaller polleni back to health and put it into a less aggressive cichlid tank where a much smaller baby Cuban cichlid nearly killed it.




The list goes on (and on). I accept full responsibility for each TFD fish that met it's unfortunate demise in my tanks!

 

[Jer]

Bummed. I tried to organize one last group buy for my area but it wasn't to be. Thanks for all you did for the hobby even for those who didn't even know you existed TFD.

 

[kevinfleming21]

I managed to clean them out of gulper cats before closing up shop! hehe

 

[isde02]

I made one order from them it was a terrible experience never ordered again. Three fish: a short nose gar I recieved with a disease, I ordered a palmas bichir and recieved a malnourished senegal, and the ugliest del. bichir I've ever seen. Its tough luck goin out of business, but I knew it was coming from all the horror stories I've heard.

 

[shamrock]

Noooooo!!!!

 

[shamrock]

iam kind of glad to see him close maybe if he let people order fish he would be open right now i tried to order like 200-300 dollars worth of fish form him he would not let me because i live in erie pa he said he sells to fish stores around here so he cant sell to me

That is odd never happened to me. As a matter of fact didn't matter if I ordered $20 or $200 worth of fish. Plus I don't own a store and they delivered to my house everytime. So don't understand why they would turn you down.

 

[cowboycasanova]

Yeah I don't know why he turned you down either. I live about 40 minutes from them and he actually let me and my brother come up there and pick out what we wanted as long as we didn't go bragging he let us do that. his only other stipulation was that we spent at least $200 cash which was no problem at all. And as far as what somethingfishy was touching on he's right. All the fish I bought from there are still alive with exception to a bowfin that was eaten but the quality was up in the air. I bought 2 tiger shovelnoses that trip and one is great and grows everyday it seems and the other has a weird deformity above his eye and a cleft lip doesn't bother me though it adds character. none the less it's not about quantity or quality or price for that matter what it's more about is realizing that it's getting harder and harder to find true predator fish in lfs. I'd rather be able to get a poor quality predator with birth defects or something rather then not be able to enjoy them at all like it seems to be coming to.

 

[mshill90]

Yeah I don't know why he turned you down either. I live about 40 minutes from them and he actually let me and my brother come up there and pick out what we wanted as long as we didn't go bragging he let us do that. his only other stipulation was that we spent at least $200 cash which was no problem at all. And as far as what somethingfishy was touching on he's right. All the fish I bought from there are still alive with exception to a bowfin that was eaten but the quality was up in the air. I bought 2 tiger shovelnoses that trip and one is great and grows everyday it seems and the other has a weird deformity above his eye and a cleft lip doesn't bother me though it adds character. none the less it's not about quantity or quality or price for that matter what it's more about is realizing that it's getting harder and harder to find true predator fish in lfs. I'd rather be able to get a poor quality predator with birth defects or something rather then not be able to enjoy them at all like it seems to be coming to.

By buying a deformed fish, you are further condoning sellers into thinking this is ok..

I would rather not own one if the only ones I can find are deformed.

Now, buying one with a small deformity, and it being the only 1 out of a batch is different.

 

[shamrock]

Well, my fish were never deformed. Now it will be harder to find good predatory fish what a bummer. Well atleast we still got Jeff Rapps!

 

[cowboycasanova]

I don't know how it is in other states but I know in northeast ohio the little mom and pop fish stores that i got a lot of predatory fish from and tfd are going out of business and it sucks. I don't have a ton of money to pay the shipping costs to buy fish online but it seems like the hobby is really dying down. Anyone have any recommendations on places in ohio to go?