Chest pain at LFS

[MRIGUY]

I just returned from a LFS and I almost had a coronary. The pompous ass behind the counter was helping a customer who had a problem with the reef he appearantly sold her several weeks ago. She was complaining that all of the fine "yellow" sand he sold her was clouding the water. He appologised and told her that she did indeed need his special filter. He didn't want to sell it to her the first time because of the cost. He told her that the special sponges will keep all the particulates from the water and thad she should never rinse them. She should replace one of the four every month. What he had made was an 8" square trickle filter with 4 seperate sponge layers. That's it. He tried to sell it to her for 450.00. Fotunatly she heard me gag and thought twice. We talked outside the store. $1,800.00 for a 75 gallon complete system with a standard particle board stand and 2 dual tube NO light strips. He included the sand (yellow playsand, she found the same stuff in the same bag at HD), two powerheads and some dried bleached coral skeletons that were to become her Live Rock. I gave her the URL for this board and tole her to clean out her tank and wait several months (spent reading) before she tried again. Since there was no life in her tank yet she thought that was a good idea. I have never been to this place before and I will not go back. His corals were pathetic and priced beyond words. Adouble head frogspawn was $95.00 and it was less that three inches across. Sorry for the length of this post but I had to vent.

[Alice]

Criminy, Mr Guy! It's stuff like that which truly makes me see red! I don't advocate bad mouthing LFS, often they are just ignorant but this one seems to fall into the just plain greedy category. AAAARRRHHHHGGGG.

Good for you on giving her the address for the board and if I were you (and her) I'd make sure that the word of mouth around town on this guy would leave a bad taste in the mouth of all the local hobbyists!

~Alice

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Reefkeeping is my life; I can't afford a hobby too!

[Rick O]

often they are just ignorant

Isn't that the sad part. They are supposed to be the experts. You can't blame the customers for not doing research, they are relying on the LFS employees to give them good advice. One LFS that I frequent, where I often hear give out bad advice, has some really good books on the shelf behind the register. Sometimes I feel like asking if they have ever read those books. Many times I've seen people at a cash register loaded up with all the neccessary "starter" items for an aquarium but never is a book included in those items.

Sorry for ranting but I feel for the animals that will suffer and the frustration that people will go through when things start to go wrong. Lucky you guys are here to steer 'em straight .

Rick

[FishDaddy]

This is one of the most disturbing aspects of our hobby. Bad advice leads to failure; failure to frustration and critter deaths and eventually to abandonment of the project for many new aquarists.

Books do not provide even the most conscientous novice with all the nuances and equipment information needed to avoid costly mistakes and useless hardware. Help from a knowledgeable LFS, a mentor or the internet is critical, especially in the beginning.
Even the most expert and experienced reefers often disagree and contradict one another at higher levels but most will agree on the basics necessary to get a tank started.

Internet access and a list of bulletin board URLs (especially TRT ) should be a prerequisite to buying a tank, especially if the newcomer has no experienced reefing friends. As pointed out, I suspect that the majority of first time aquarists do not even know that internet resources exist and many have no access.

The whole LFS business has all kinds. There are many knowledgeable, honest and sincere LFS owners and employees. We have them as members here. There are others that are uninformed and even worse, unscrupulous as are found in any other commercial genre.
Even the best of the locally owned stores do have a problem in making an honest profit due to the specialized nature of this hobby. Individual owners don't have the buying power of the chains and cannot stock all the varied products that MO companies can.

I always keep in mind a dear friend of mine who owned a local hardware store....in its third generation of family ownership. Now departed, he knew his business, his customers and did fair trading at fair prices. When one of the *Mart chain stores came to town, he could not compete, though he kept his store open until his death. I always bought anything I needed that he carried from him, even though I could have gotten it cheaper from the *Mart. The last thing I bought from him was a freezer, only a few days before he passed away. He confided in me that the *Mart sold the same freezer for less money than he could get it from his wholesaler.
I've never forgotten that situation and what a friend he was.

I trade at two LFS, one of which is a small local store and the other much larger that also does internet MO business. I try to buy everything I can from them first before ordering from the net. I sincerely want these two businesses to stay in business, not only because of the convenience to me but because they are good people and good friends.

On the other hand, I wouldn't trade with a rip-off store if they were right across the street.

I can only urge folks to support their good LFS and hope the bad ones go out of business before causing further harm.
Dick

[Alice]

(sigh) I, unfortunately, just got another example of a greedy LFS. The fact that the shop in question is in direct competion with the shop at which I work part time gives me no satisfaction. A very nice young man wanted to set up a reef tank. The LFS sure got him one...to the tune of $1800. Oak stand, canopy, 4x36 PC's, 55 gallon acrylic tank, 15 gallon sump and a 800gph powerhead as a return pump. Oh and lest I forget, a couple inches of crushed coral, one bag of salt and a tight fitting cover for the top of the tank. No skimmer included in this deal, nor any instruction whatsoever. This nice young man has tried repeatedly, for a month and a half, to get some guidance from this LFS, to no avail. He called our shop and I went over and talked to him and his family for over an hour tonight. I gave him the names of some books to get him started and the URL for this board.

So here's hoping we'll soon have another new member that we can help to avoid the pitfalls of the greedy and ignorant LFS and help get him started in this great hobby!

~Alice

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Reefkeeping is my life; I can't afford a hobby too!

[This message has been edited by Alice (edited 01-27-2001).]

[BurnNSpy]

Actually, everything you wanted to know about reef keeping can be found in Vol 1&2 of books written by Julian Sprung, they cost just over $100 for the set. Throw in Live sand secrets and Protein Skimming and activated carbon secrets by Dr Bob Goemans, ande assured success.

BurnNSpy

[Doug1]

Unfortunatly it happens all the time, I dont know what can be done about it except try to spread the word. If you find nice but antiquated thinking LFS try to share the net with them. I have found that stores with active reefers working there are more into keeping up. I you run across someone in the same spot as MRIguy speak up, if you get booted it's no big loss. On the other hand we really need to support th ones that do care and try to do a good job

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I dont advocate holding marine creatures for ransom but......since you asked
Doug, plank owner

[Brooke]

This kind of reminds me of the nurse/doctor/patient relationship I see at work. A nurse can tell a patient what is going on...but they won't really pay attention until they hear it from the doctor. I have been in fish stores a couple of times where I've whispered to someone...hey, you don't want to buy that coral. It's expelled its zooxanthellae. They look at me like i'm from outer space and have the plague. Get to know the owners/managers of the fish stores. If you show them you've done your homework, the good ones will give you an honest recommendation. Read, read, read and be ready to cite sources for your data. Sprung says that......Shimek says........ It makes what you are saying much more credible.

On the other hand...one thing I have laxed on in my few years of going to fish stores is freaking out when I see a dead fish in a tank. It happens. Most LFS people really do care about their livestock.

Keep searching for the good stores. Visit every one in a 30 mile radius! Then, support the ones that are good to their animals, sell captive-bred when available, and educate their customers.

Brooke

[mini mee]

Hi All
Just reading through the posts and they were all well made replies with good points in all of them.
I think everyone has heard a bad lfs story at one time or another.
FishDaddy summed it up in a nut shell books are good but the experience you gain from bb (the reef tank ) are great to.

My greedy LFS and they are greedy just to give you an example and there are many but here is one.

A man walks into the LFS proceeds into the fish room he is new to the hobby and in fact has just started to cycle his new reef tank. He looks over their critters and decides he would like a anenome to go with his 2 clowns,Yes replies the the LFS employee you will have no problem they are easy to keep.
2 weeks go by he then buys a tang he puts it in the tank and it does a B-liner for the anenome, he frees it from the anenome but the tang dies.
The point is the LFS sets the guy up to take a fall if they hadn't sold the new bie the anenome to cycle his tank in the first place if you can believe that, then the Tang would still be alive to boot.

It really erks me when I hear these kind of stories,the LFS knows better but they keep selling to people that don't know,yes it is a buyer beware case but what about the reef critters.
The store make the sale the critter dies the customer does not get his money back and the store brings in more critters

Greed that is what it is and there is no excuse for it!


mini mee

[Raszagil]

It may be true that many store employees are ignorant, but who in their right mind would go to a clothes store, walk up to the person behind the desk, and say "I have no idea what I want or what my size is, dress me!" But I get that ALL the time from people (I work at PetsMart)! I know alot about fish, and I help out alot but COME ON!

Think about it. Let's say a customer walks into a petshop, buys a puppy, leaves, comes back in a week complaining that the dog died, you ask questions, and finally get "oh, you mean you have to *feed* it?" type answers, who do you blame? The person for selling the dog to what looks like a reasonable, senseble person, or the idiot who couldn't be bothered to even read up on the very basics of pet care? The person who is *taking on the responsability* for the animal? 9 times out of 10 I can't tell who's the fish geek and who's the total novice. I always try to ask questions, but when we get slammed, it gets very difficult, and I can't spend an hour (though if it's slow I do) trying to explain the tank cycle and everything else to customers, I just don't have the time.

I can understand asking LFS persons questions, they should at least know the basics. But so should customers. The kinds of attitudes I get from many people I try to help absolutely infuriates me. It's like they say....it's not the work that fries ya, it's the people.

My 30 cents...

Raz

p.s. Ya on the dead fish, it used to just fry me...but my workplace has 130 aquariums with over a 1000 individual fish...at that point some fish dying becomes a statistic. I try to get dead fish out of the tanks ASAP, and our store is rather decent, but with so many tanks it's not always possible.

[horge]

Here's a thought...

Whenever you go to an LFS, try to leave them the TRT url, and a description of the advantages of visiting --and tell 'em it's FREE. Heck, you could even try 'consigning' small flyers with the url's of the better boards for customers to pick up.

If an LFS employee or owner has questions, they know where to ask --and they can always ask anonymously, as though they WEREN'T LFS people (what with the stigma and all ).
If they like the advice they get, they might go the extra yard and personally recommend the boards to their customers.

Really, while there are some LFS that really don't know what they're getting themselves into, quite a fair number mean well and do well. Let's give equal bandwidth and to LFS that we know have their rocks in the right place.

It's bad business for us to carry and exude an automatic bias against LFS people, whether from mom-&-pop outfits or the big chains. When they come here, they should feel comfortable asking away, right?

just my peso (2 US cents)
horge

PS: Many, many years ago, I went to the trouble of printing out and laminating some basic aquarium do's and dont's. I even photocopied (expensive back then) and stapled together palm-size pamphlets describing 'cycling' a tank, proper feeding practices, stocking rates, --heck, I even included illustrated descriptions of the most common livestock.

I gave them away to LFS everywhere and encouraged them to photocopy the same for further distribution. I even made colorful glossy-cardboard display trays for showing off the cheap pamphlets. All for free. It was tough getting one out of five to accept the stuff seriously --but in time most of the shops were handing them out for a small fee or as a bonus with their merchandise.

Geez. Maybe I should try to find out if I still have one of those xerox-and-staple little badboys

[Rick O]

Horge,

IMO most LFS owners want to keep their customers away from the discussion boards. Too much talk about mail order and DIY on here. I did hear the wife of an LFS owner tell a new customer to "be sure to dip all of your LR in freshwater before adding it to your tank to get rid of all the unwanted crabs". I've also seen the Tamaria stria being sold as a purple linkia. When I suggested that it might not actually be a purple linkia I was blown off. Later that week I received a bulk e-mail from the LFS proudly advertising purple linkias for $55.99. This same LFS tried to sell me a mis-identified star fish as a red serpent star (it wasn't even red).

I do believe thet everyone that comes to these boards truly wants to learn more about the animals we keep but is it too much to ask of the LFS for them to learn something too?

This post is not aimed at all LFS employees. I know there are many dedicated ones out there (Alice, Sara ). I just don't know how any other industry can get away with knowing so little about the business they're in.

Rick

[Brooke]

Maybe I can make up some business cards that have our URL on them and a little info about us. Then I can send some out to those of you who want them and we can pass them out at LFS's, at reef meetings, etc. How does this sound??

Brooke

[jaxbchreef]

When we started converting to a reef system from FO system, my girlfriend only trusted one LFS. The owner was honest and steered us away from incompatable fish (when she had FO). He made recomendations on adding live rock that were confirmed on this and other BB. We also checked out other stores. One had birds and rodents as well as fresh and salt. I listened to the sales clerk deal with other customers. It became obvious that they would sell any combination of fish and any number of fish with out even asking tank size. The second store I checked out only sells saltwater fish and items. Their reef tanks were extremely healthy (even more so than the first LFS described), the clerks were very intent on making the customer aware of the difficulty of keeping various fiish and corals. They were interested when I mentioned BBs, and they had sign up for reef clubs. The main point I would like to make is: The best way to learn is to get many different opinions and then try to gain experience. Even the store that was taking customers for a ride had lessons for me to learn. My best success has come when I don't impulse buy, and visit the LFS several times before I even talk to the clerk.
I guess I am lucky that we have several excellent LFS and the prices here seem to be a bit lower than other areas. I still would rather see what I'm buying before I give them money.

[Wrasse Man]

I think the only thing worse than an LFS that doesn't care about the critters and the critter's keepers, is when the good ones 'go away'.

In my welcome post on this board I mentioned a store that I would drive 1 hour by toll-way to Illinos just to look around. Great live-stock, excellent corals, knowledgeable folks. Great place huh? Well, the owner decided to sell, he was in the business 13 years. The guy he was selling it to was also in the business and had great stores also. No problem. The landlord decided that a 'pet store' did not fit in the shoppette with furriers and antique dealers, so he wouldn't renew the lease. So, no more store. I actually told the people that were working there about this site and they seemed eager to check it out, but that was before this all happened.
Now I have to find a decent store again. Any good LFS' in Milwaukee?

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"Nothing good ever happens fast in a reef tank."